


Endless Blue

by Lafayette1777



Series: Around and Between [2]
Category: Arctic Monkeys, British Singers RPF, Indie Music RPF, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: AU - Academia, Alternate Universe, Angst, Boston, Classical Music, Cochituate, Higher Education, M/M, Major Illness, Massachusetts, New England, Origami, Slow Burn, archaeologist Alex, cellist Miles, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, fuck brady and his squishy balls, hard conversations, he's back from India and everything's gone to shit, hiatus/tlsp2 hair, late twenties professional panic, questionable Maine vacations, there's also a snake named Karl involved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-23 13:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 30,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6117803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>When Alex returns to New England, three years after galloping off to South Asia, he finds that nothing is how he left it.</em> </p><p>A sequel to <em>Spin.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one's been a long time coming, hasn't it? I don't have as much written as I would like but I couldn't contain myself. The usual alternate universe warning: I dunno what the fuck I'm talking about so feel free to call me on anything that's bullshit. Also, enjoy!

It’s fucking hot. Sweltering, really.

In truth, he should be used to it by now, but twenty-four hours dipping in and out of climate controlled fuselages and terminals has left him maladapted; he’s already losing his South Asian conditioning. From the breast pocket of his shirt, there seems to be a wiggle of agreement. Not for the first time, he contemplates turning on his heel and getting right back on the next plane to Delhi.

But, no.

The international terminal at Logan has always been poorly air conditioned. He’s forgotten. What else has slipped his mind? He’s got only the thinnest reason to doubt his own memory, and yet the question settles thickly in his gut. He’s already missing something. 

He’s claustrophobic in the way that only a New England summer can make him. Boston, maybe even especially. The crowd is swarming, close in every sense of the word. He stands amidst them, sunglasses on, single duffel bag held close. He’d never been afraid in India, or in Pakistan, or even Afghanistan. The unfamiliar had become welcome. Now, though, it’s the familiar that has him by the throat. He’s been stifled by New England before. 

Finally, a charcoal Prius breaks daringly from the sea of start-and-stop traffic before him, swerving over to jump one wheel up onto the curb of the drop-off strip. The driver’s side door swings open, an elated _Alex_ slips off a tongue, and just like that he’s released from the binds of the masses. 

Matt Helders tends to have that effect on people. 

“Matthew J. Helders the Third,” Alex breathes in elated greeting, before Matt nearly lifts him off his feet with the strength of his embrace. 

“I brought you something,” Matt says, pulling back before Alex can ask any questions. He produces, from his back pocket, the indicative shiny foil package of a Poptart. “For your sweet tooth. Figured you hadn’t had one in a while.”

Alex stares at the package in his hands for a half second before his gaze darts up again. “I love you so much,” he laughs, and pulls Matt into another hug. 

If things have changed, he can’t see how. 

A traffic cop screams at them in a heavy Boston accent, and Matt waits a petulant moment before following her directions. Alex tosses his faded brown duffel into the back before climbing into the passenger seat. Matt immediately swerves out into traffic, cutting off a BMW in the process. Strangely, Alex recalls, Matt is one of the few people on Earth who enjoys the drive into Logan, and always has. The well-behaved T.F. Green trip in Rhode Island was never enough of a thrill for him; much to Breana’s irritation, he’d often make plans to fly in or out of Boston just for the stimulation of the drive to the airport. Now, though, the ride is unavoidable. 

“So, how’s Cochituate?” Alex asks, once his fingers have unclenched from the seatbelt. 

Matt shrugs. “Cheaper than the rest of Wayland. And close enough to work. The girls like it, I think. That’s the main thing.” 

“How’ve you guys all been?” Alex prods further, suddenly desperate. “I talked to you in February but--”

“Good,” Matt says. They pause at a red light, and Matt looks over at him with something puzzling and unknown in his gaze. “We’re good.”

For a moment, Alex isn’t sure what to say. The silence passes, though, when Matt flips off another driver with a giddy grin. The tension seems to defuse. “I guess I’ll get to meet Amelia, then,” Alex murmurs, smiling tentatively. 

The way Matt’s face lights up is something to behold. “Yes, you will,” he replies, changing lanes. “And I’ll invite Kelly and Nick over too, as soon as possible. Hearst’s five going on forty.”

Alex snorts, unsurprised. He asks, ignoring his own ulterior motive, “How far is Cochituate from Providence? I can’t quite picture the route.”

Matt gives him a sideways look, like he can read his mind. He shrugs. “An hour, depending on traffic.” The brakes screech as a pedestrian jaywalks fearlessly across four lanes. “And you’ve heard Jamie and Katie are back in Sheffield.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking about dropping in on them when I next see me parents,” Alex says, eyes swerving out the window. It shouldn’t be so strange to return and find that the Little Yorkshire contingent has splintered; it was always inevitable, he supposes, even if it comes with a bit of a sting. In truth, it might even have been his fault - Alex _was_ the first to jump ship. 

He’s thinking something along the lines of _we can’t go back_ when Matt cuts in with, “What the _fuck_ is that?”

His eyes have gone wide, his neck craning backwards as he locks onto Alex’s breast pocket and stares at where the string-like body is slithering elegantly over the denim fabric. Alex offers up one hand for the snake to slip into before it falls into his lap. “Karl Marx,” he says casually. 

“What?”

“That’s his name. Karl.” Alex strokes a finger fondly down the length of the tiny snake. “He’s fully grown but Shield-taileds stay little.”

“You flew with that all the way from India?” Matt is still looking at him like Alex himself has shed his skin. 

“Actually I picked him up in Sri Lanka a few months ago. But, yeah. He’s very well behaved.”

“Why’s his name Karl Marx?”

“Because he’s a communist.” Alex lifts an insouciant eyebrow.

Eventually, Matt gives up and begins to laugh. After a minute, Alex joins in with a breathy giggle, and Karl writhes his way back into the protection of Alex’s pocket. The last twenty-four hours of movement have conspired with jet lag to make this morning more surreal than it was already destined to be, and the euphoria of being back in the familiar radius of Matt’s soothing aura has Alex feeling unguarded and loose in a way he has no right to be.

 

 

Boston proper fades, and the suburbs begin. Leafy green fills in around glassy blue lakes and country clubs and expansive colonial homes. Brookline passes, then Newton and Waltham, but they come up short of Framingham. In Cochituate the houses shrink, but only marginally, and the wealthier side of Wayland looms, almost visibly, to the north. Matt turns into the long driveway of a modest gray split level with an aboveground pool visible in the backyard. Alex, for a moment, tries to picture the one-bedroom loft Matt and Breana had squeezed into back in Providence, and finds that this new image almost overpowers it. 

Alex is still nibbling on his poptart and brushing the hair out of his face as they trek toward the side door. It occurs to him that he’s not actually discussed with Matt how long he’ll be staying, or any of his future plans at all.

This is most likely because he doesn’t currently have any. 

Inside, the house is stuffy and cluttered and so intimately and immediately _home_ that Alex forgets about the future completely. Breana, grinning, appears from the screened in porch and swiftly hands him a somewhat disconcerted baby Amy, who looks at him with distrust but allows him to hold her until reaching her fists out for her father.

“Do you need lunch, Al?” Breana asks, one hand resting atop Amy’s head where it has descended onto Matt’s shoulder. “I was thinking we could do dinner here tonight, invite over Nick and Kelly and Mi--”

She cuts herself off and the abrupt silence that follows has Alex’s gaze speeding toward the floor tiles self-consciously. He feels rather than sees Matt and Breana exchange a look. 

“Or, um, we could--” Breana tries again, but Alex’s head snaps up with a severity that surprises even himself. 

“No, it’s okay. Invite everyone,” he says softly. “I need to catch up, I think.”

The tension doesn’t fade. Matt scratches the back of his head in that characteristic way, and Alex turns his eyes on him intently. Matt sighs. “Listen, mate, I dunno if Miles has told you…”

“He hasn’t,” Alex replies, with jarring certainty. 

Matt, if possible, looks even more uncomfortable at this revelation. “Then it’s not really my place to tell you, I don’t think.”

“Tell me what?” When Matt is, again, unforthcoming, he retreats. “Just, invite him. If he doesn’t mind driving from Providence. If he wants to see me, of course.”

“He doesn’t live in Providence anymore,” Breana intercedes, a concerned crease developing between her sculpted eyebrows. “He’s in Cochituate now also. Have you guys really not talked at all?”

The last part isn’t quite a condemnation, but it’s nearing one and Alex, once again, is aware that he’s missing pieces here that seem alarmingly pertinent. His eyes latch onto a paper crane folded from beautiful, floral patterned paper, resting atop the living room telly. 

Something occurs to him.

“Wait, if he doesn’t live in Providence, does he commute all the way to Brown every day?”

“Um, no,” Matt murmurs. “He doesn’t.”

The silence stretches between the three of them, and finally Alex allows it to break and excuses himself to the bathroom. Through the thin door, he hears Matt and Breana’s muttering voices, and makes the split second decision to not understand a word of it. 

 

 

He spends the afternoon with Amelia and Karl Marx in the backyard, noticeably distant from the adult world and its consequences. It takes some time to convince Breana of Karl’s absolute harmlessness, and some more time to make sure Amy’s pudgy hands don’t squeeze him too hard. Karl is unfazed, and slithers happily through the grass under Alex’s careful supervision.

The long, hazy day ends with Amelia’s bed time and cocktails on the screen porch. Margaritas, of course, are his specialty, and so while Matt and Breana speculate on dinner plans, Alex prepares his ingredients with expert precision. By the time the guest list is confirmed, they’ve all had a drink and a half each and are languidly reheating the massive pot roast Breana had put together the day before. 

Nick and Kelly arrive by eight, and the sound of the doorbell ringing sends a flash of fear through Alex that defies even the numb of the alcohol and the languorous afternoon. He relaxes, briefly, in Nick’s strong hug and his demand that Alex visit the Lauriston house within the week.

“Hearst will be ecstatic,” Nick promises. 

“Does he even remember me?” Alex asks, with a weak smile, suddenly aware of the hollowness in his own voice. 

“How could he not?” Nick retorts, quietly, as though he too has detected the duality in the conversation. 

There seems to be a collective speculation about the location of the final guest, but it is a silent speculation. Alex isn’t sure if there’s more tension in the air or in his bones. The others mill about like they’re waiting for the atomic bomb to drop. Alex ponders quietly whether he is too. 

There comes the sound of car wheels crunching over the gravel drive. The breath in Alex’s throat seems to catch just beneath his tonsils. Nick is making a feeble attempt to keep up a line of questioning about India, but he can’t stop his eyes from flickering toward the entrance between blinks. Silence plummets into the room in the half second before the doorbell chirps. For a moment, there’s no movement. 

And then Alex finds himself with a hand on the knob and the door swinging open before him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the bit of a wait! I've a lot on right now but thanks for hanging in :)

The guest bedroom is painted a demure periwinkle, but the light duvet is a clashing shade of spring green. Alex tosses his duffel into the corner, slips out of his jeans, and urges Karl Marx into the safety of the ventilated mason jar he’s dug out of his luggage. It’s only once he’s nestled between the sheets that he allows himself to reflect - and subsequently deflate. 

Miles has shaved his head.

It should be an insignificant change and yet somehow Alex is floored by it. The close crop on Miles’s head had matched the stubble stretched over his thin chin. He’d been dressed in black slacks under a slimming black turtleneck and had not looked Alex in the eye once over the course of the evening. Alex is not sure how he expected dinner to go, but that was not it. The tense silence never dissipated - they’d mumbled a few words at each other in greeting and then retreated to different corners of the room. It was so anticlimactic it churned Alex’s stomach. 

They are strangers. He should’ve known. 

But there was that moment on the patio, though, when they were the last two collecting dishes. And Miles had paused on the threshold and stared at Alex’s throat for a split second, both hesitant and expectant. It was then that Alex noticed that he seemed pale, or maybe just thin - he was standing in a way Alex had never seen before, as if halfway closed in on himself. Everything about him seemed muted. _Pianissimo._

Alex’s lips had moved but made no sound. There was no apology, no attempt to justify himself, and Miles had not forgiven him. Alex had not been expecting him to and is still not entirely sure whether he needs Miles’s forgiveness or not - India itself was not a misstep, even if his exit from Rhode Island is still not something that sits right in his gut. 

Miles has never been one to be at a loss for words. There’s something here that he’s missing - Matt won’t tell him, and evidently Miles won’t either. But what does it have to do with him, anyway? If Miles doesn’t want to share then maybe it’s not his business. Miles is the past, and regardless of the fear and uncertainty that clouds his future, there’s no going back. 

He turns onto his left side, slipping an arm beneath the pillow with a little more vehemence than he intends. A wisp of that old anger is flaring up in him, despite his attempts to extinguish it. For a moment, no time has passed at all, and he’s back in the Sheldon street apartment with Miles under his arm and a restlessness brewing in his bones. 

 

 

Matt’s patience is endless and Alex, rather manipulatively, intends to take full advantage of that fact. They’ve known each other long enough that Helders would just throat punch him if Alex went too far, but he’s probably merciful enough to pull the punch short of breaking his trachea should they ever reach that point. Alex can take the risk.

So on the next Tuesday afternoon he borrows Matt’s Prius and heads east. It’s a day that’s less than gloriously vernal - the sky is clouded over and the air as he gets closer to sea grows dense in that foreboding way. When Providence comes into view, it nearly clogs his lungs. 

Thayer street hasn’t changed. The looming structure of the Brown Sciences Library catches his eye and if it stings a little, to picture life as it was, he ignores it in favor of looking for a parking spot on a side street. Wandering through the crowds on the sidewalk, he has to remind himself to release the tension in his shoulders - there’s still something strange about hearing his own language being spoken on the breeze, especially in a place so familiar. It’s perpetual dejá vú, and it’s unnerving. He picks at hole in the collar of his t-shirt and tries to sheath his own mind from the Providence hum. 

Josh Homme has procured himself a bubble tea by the time Alex arrives in the incense-fragrant tea shop. The walls are dark wood, insulating from the chaos of the street, the menus written in garishly swooping handwriting over charcoal blackboards. Alex orders a Masala chai and then makes his way over to Josh’s corner table with a reserved smile.

“You look like shit,” Homme says, with a smirk, just before his lips close around the straw of his drink. 

“Ta,” Alex snorts, running a hand through half greased hair. “Well, you’re old. Fuck off.”

Josh laughs. “That’s fair. So what the fuck happened?”

“What the fuck happened to what?”

“You fell off a cliff three years ago, apparently. I was curious to see how things were going but that archaeological institute in Delhi said you’d broke your contract and run off.”

“I got bored.”

Homme rolls his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you went off to _find yourself_ , or something similarly fuck-witted.”

Alex giggles softly, but shakes his head. “No, I just wanted to dig. I didn’t mean to drop off the radar; I just wasn’t paying attention.”

In reality, though, he wasn’t quite so oblivious. He’d left no forwarding address for a reason - that way, at least, he could delude himself into believing that he wasn’t getting any messages from Miles because he was no longer in Delhi, rather than because they weren’t being sent. It hadn’t worked, though. All he’d succeeded in doing, ultimately, was worry his mother, and Matt. In Lahore, he’d allowed himself to resurface, to call a few relatives and friends and remind himself that there was no meaning to this journey, and that he should stop trying to looking for one. And it was at that point he was finally able to direct his attention toward the dirt, and what lay beneath. 

“And did you?” Homme asks.

“Did I what?”

“Dig.”

Alex scratches at a hangnail on his thumb. “Eventually.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

Alex, rather pathetically, wishes he could stop asking himself the same question. Josh is a man who deals in absolutes - back when Alex was still editing his dissertation, Homme had had the misfortune of hearing Alex ramble through his own sentences two or three times a week. Conciseness has never been Alex’s strong suit, and somehow it feels especially painful to think of prattling off all the layers of worry and indecision and not-quite-regret that surround his return. To hear those shapes fall out of his own mouth would only be disheartening. 

Instead, he asks Josh about Brody and the kids and looks at the dirt under his fingernails as often as possible. At the end, when Josh is gathering his things and offering a palliative goodbye, Alex finally chokes out the question he’s supposed to:

“So, have you heard of any jobs coming up recently?”

The jubilance visibly melts from Josh’s eyes. He looks uncertain in a way that Alex is not sure he’s ever seen him. He says, with an uncharacteristically hushed tone, “You know how academia is right now, Alex. Our field, especially.”

“I know, I know, I just...will you let me know if anything comes up?”

“Of course,” Homme consoles. “Does this mean you’re here to stay?”

Alex just smiles thinly in response. 

 

 

He kills the afternoon in the Brown bookstore, pondering the spines of overpriced hardbacks and eventually trying to drown out his thoughts in the thickest history textbook he can find. He’s tucked himself into a corner to learn about ancient Songhai when a familiar pair of cargo shorts catches his eye.

It’s Nathan Gensemer, the violinist - and Miles’s former student. A few years older, but largely unchanged, and navigating through the aisles with a stack of astrophysics textbooks in what is presumably prep for the summer session. The beginnings of a master’s degree, perhaps. He’s a development admit, a liar, the reason Miles’s record will be forever tarnished by an unpaid suspension, and when he meets Alex’s eyes in passing there’s not even the slightest hint of recognition. There’s a swell of rage inside Alex, then, that he realizes a moment later is not even directed at Nathan. 

Miles and Nathan achieved closure - though Miles ultimately suffered in the end, their interactions came full circle. Nathan apologized, and Miles surely forgave. To think that Nathan should be allowed to resolve his troubles and move on, but that Alex should not, has Alex’s hands unconsciously clenching into fists. 

He deserves closure. On a more charitable note, Miles does too. This new secrecy in Miles keeps them bound to each other in the same way as their sudden, acrimonious split. The past still has him by the ankles. 

He’s had enough.

The keys to Matt’s car jingle in his pocket when he rises to his feet. He thinks he catches a glimpse of Nathan on his way out, but doesn’t stop to look.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Not only was this chapter difficult to write, but I also had an insanely busy week. Thanks for reading!

In truth, he had been expecting more difficulty. 

Back in Cochituate, he finds Matt trimming the front hedges in a Wet Nuns shirt and aviators. Alex marches straight up to him, chin aloft, and says, “Where does Miles live?”

He waits for Matt to shrug, or at least seem ambivalent on whether or not to reveal such apparently confidential information. Instead, he fixes Alex with an inscrutable look, and then points one finger to the west. “Three houses down. He’s got a red door.”

Alex just gapes at him for a moment. “That close? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t ask,” Matt says, but it’s clear that that’s not the whole answer. Again, something clandestine lurks between every syllable spoken about Miles. Alex feels that impatience, that injustice, rise in him again. He murmurs a thank you at Matt, hands back the keys to the Prius, and heads west.

He spots the anointed house immediately, the red door catching the afternoon light. The yard is less immaculate than Matt’s - the late spring growth has allowed the flower boxes to overgrow with weeds and the grass to explode in verdant clumps. Alex’s eyes break from the ground and to the figure stretched over the halfway reclined lawn chair. 

Miles turns his head, slightly, when Alex enters the yard, but says nothing and makes no move to get up. He’s wearing dark sunglasses and is dressed only in swim trunks. With his bare chest exposed, he looks even thinner, but in direct sunlight he’s lost some of the pallor from before. Sweat prickles in the thin beard on his chin when he looks up to silently appraise Alex.

“We need to talk,” Alex says directly, looming over him. 

Miles takes a languid pause before replying, “Do we?”

“There’s something going on with you.” Alex can feel himself losing his nerve, faced now with Miles’s indifference. “There’s something going on with _us_. Still.”

At a maddeningly apathetic pace, Miles reaches one hand into his shorts pocket. He checks the time on his phone, tips his head toward the sky, then says quietly, “I have a lesson in five minutes.”

“A lesson?”

Miles sits up with a groan, and swings his legs into a sitting position on the edge of the chair. He looks dazed for a moment, as though trying to blink away dizziness. “A cello student,” he continues, with a touch of offense. As if aware that, at one point, Alex would not have had to ask. 

He’s wandering back toward the house now, barefoot on the scrubby lawn. Without any other indication of what he should do, Alex follows. Miles does not shut the door in his face, and doesn’t even look back when the other man plods into the foyer and then into the living space behind him. Miles’s house is smaller than Matt’s; whitewashed on the outside, and only one story. Inside, Alex recognizes some of the furniture from the Providence flat, as well as a few new pieces in the same vein of eclecticism. Everything in the open plan kitchen and living room is frighteningly neat, and all at once Alex is reminded of that peculiar trait - Miles cleans when he’s nervous. 

Miles does not acknowledge his presence, or his wandering eyes, and instead slips into a Clash t-shirt and heads back toward the door just as a low-slung nineties sedan pulls into the short gravel drive. A tall blonde with the characteristic instrument case dragging behind her greets Miles on the stoop, and together they head toward a back room that Alex can’t quite see.

Alex does not leave, as he suspects Miles is hoping. Instead, he settles onto one of the couches he planned his dissertation on and sprawls out until some of the tension releases from his shoulders. From the back of the house, he hears a three octave major scale ring out, then a melodic minor. He registers the cadence of the gentle voice Miles uses for teaching, but cannot distinguish the words. 

After an hour, the blonde takes her leave. She mentions something about getting her bow rehaired; Miles recommends a salt-and-pepper rather than pure white hair, based on the tone of her instrument. Her eyes land on Alex for the briefest of moments but Miles ushers her out quickly with, “Have a good afternoon, Taylor,” before she can acknowledge Alex in any way. 

Alex sits up expectantly after she’s gone, but Miles only sends him a blank eyed stare, aimed at Alex’s shirt pocket. Karl Marx has his head out, his tongue tasting the air demurely every few seconds. Miles just rolls his eyes and aims himself toward the kitchen. Again, Alex follows, coming around the center island to stand opposite from where the other man is putting the kettle on. He catches sight of one Alexa’s paintings hanging over the oven. 

It’s when Alex’s eyes drop to the windowsill over the sink, in what is meant to be another passing glance, that his expression freezes and his heart abruptly stops beating. 

“Miles,” he says, and tries not to choke when his voice goes an octave lower than it should be. “Is there something I need to know?”

Miles’s gaze slithers toward the windowsill, but he does not turn away from the kettle. There’s a long loaded pause, where Alex can’t seem to will himself to breathe, and then the Scouser lets out, “No.”

Before Alex can reply, or maybe scream, Miles motions toward the screen door onto the back patio. “Come sit with me for a moment.”

Alex follows on autopilot. The surreal sinks down over him again, as it had when he’d first landed in Boston - then, though, he hadn’t been able to identify it. Now, it rises in his throat and settles behind his teeth while he waits for Miles to speak. The brick patio is cool beneath his feet, and the lowering sun has cast most of the backyard in shadow. Miles blows on his tea and unfurls his fist to reveal a handful of pills, presumably from the bottles on the windowsill. Alex doesn’t get a chance to count them before Miles tosses them back with a hearty swig from his mug. 

“Miles,” Alex begins, and it’s work to keep his voice contained to a smooth, rational tone. “If it’s...you have to tell me. I have a right to know, for me own health at the very least.”

“You’re clean,” Miles says, waving a dismissive hand. “I was fine before you left. It was afterwards that I—that I made some ill-advised decisions. Everyone who needed to know was told and tested themselves.”

“Still, Miles—”

“Do you not trust me, Al?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex blurts, a little more forcefully than he intends. “How long has it been like this? You should’ve said something, even if you didn’t think I was infected.”

Miles eyes him with a visibly tenuous restraint. “Do not tell me what I should and should not do, Alex.”

“I just think it’s unsafe and unfa—”

“ _What do you want me to do?_ ” His legs are still folded casually, his hands still grasping his mug in a timorous two-handed grip, but his lip has curled and the tendons in his neck are taut. “The decision’s made. Do you need to me say it aloud, just so you don’t feel like you’re the lone man out?”

When Alex doesn’t say anything, he bristles further, turning his torso in the wrought iron deck chair to face Alex fully. “Fine: I. Have. HIV. I will _always_ have HIV, and it’s no one’s fault but mine.”

There’s something about hearing the words—it shakes something loose in Alex’s head and he can no longer speak, or process. Miles takes in his blank expression, then turns away in apparent disgust. He digs a long-fingered hand into his shorts pocket until he can produce a shred of receipt, and then lays it out on the table in front of him in an attempt to smooth out the wrinkles. Miles begins to fold, and he’s nearly done before Alex realizes he’s making a paper crane. 

“It’s a technique for de-stressing,” he explains, once he catches Alex’s gaze, and his voice is soft in a way that Alex probably doesn’t deserve. “Do you wanna drink?”

The night has turned chilly in that early summer sort of way. The greens in the yard turn blue in the waning light. Miles prepares a couple of gin and tonics, but their fingers don’t touch when he passes the glass over to Alex. Alex barely makes it halfway through his drink before he murmurs out, “I should be headed back to Matt’s.”

Miles makes no comment, but simply shows him to the door. 

On the front stoop, he finds himself with his back to the night breeze and his front to the sepia-toned warmth of Miles. Strands of hair fall into Alex’s face, but he doesn’t move to straighten them. 

“I’m sorry,” Alex breathes out, finally, and he’s aware that the target of his apology is somewhat unclear. 

Miles, thankfully, does not offer anything along the lines of _it’s okay_ in return. Instead, he reaches one hand out and gently brushes the long, dark strands out of Alex’s vision and tucks them behind Alex’s right ear. It’s with a tenderness that has Alex biting his own bottom lip harder than he cares to admit. 

There’s nothing else said. Miles’s gaze dips downwards, and he closes the red door with a quiet, reverberating thump, leaving Alex to whatever the night wishes for him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you guess what album I listened to on repeat while writing this?
> 
> thanks to Stanzie for musing with me all week!

Matt’s wiping down the kitchen counter when Alex finally tumbles back inside, hair wind-ruffled and eyes red. Matt takes one look at him, tosses the rag into the sink, and pulls him into a bone-crushing embrace. Breana joins in a moment later - she’s just gotten back from a work function of some sort and is dressed in a long black evening gown, smelling like a warm combination of breast milk and Chanel No. 5. 

They sit him down at the dining room table with a cup of tea. Amelia’s in bed already - the baby monitor is silent save her even breaths. Breana is pulling off her heels and unwrapping the cuff bracelet from around her left wrist as Matt looks gently at Alex. “So I take it he’s told you, then?”

This is the situation. Or what Helders knows of it, at least.

Miles has had to leave his position at Brown, due to his fluctuating health. He’s retreated to Cochituate because it’s cheaper, and in closer proximity to work opportunities - he fills his time with private lessons and weekend clinician gigs for local symphonies and youth orchestras. He makes it to Providence every once in awhile for an adjunct job. There’s an irony here, that Alex won’t let himself appreciate - all that fuss three years ago about Miles not wanting to give up his job for India, and he’s ended up losing it anyway.

“How’s his health?” Alex asks, trying to lift his gaze from the wood grain of the table and failing. 

Breana shrugs, but it’s not an ambivalent motion. “He doesn’t say much about it. It’s not progressed to AIDS, but he’s only recently been properly diagnosed with HIV at all, so it’s hard to say. I’m not sure he’d tell us, anyways.”

“The drugs are pretty brutal, too, I think,” Matt murmurs. “He’s well quiet about all of it, though. We try and help, but—I dunno, but I think getting the actual diagnosis has just made it worse for him. He won’t tell us nowt.”

“This is so fucked up,” Alex manages, voice raw. 

“Are you gonna get yourself checked?” Breana asks, quietly enough that Alex can hear the look she exchanges with Matt without having to glance up. 

Alex nods stiffly. “He said it happened after I left, but...I just need to be sure.”

“Yeah, of course.” A moment later, Matt has out a pen and a sticky note. “There’s a walk-in clinic in town. Dunno what all services they offer but they can direct you somewhere, at least.”

“Ta.” Alex is rising from his seat and heading toward the stairs before he’s even registered the exhaustion propelling him toward bed. He doesn’t make it to the stairs before Matt calls out to him again. 

“Alex, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s just—”

“It’s his business, I understand.” He sets a leaden foot on the bottom stair.

“I’m sure you don’t have it,” Breana adds. “If Miles says it was after you’d gone, it must be true. He wouldn’t told you otherwise, I’m sure.”

He doesn’t look back to see the plea that is surely in her eyes. It’s easier to believe Miles than to question his memory, or his honesty. Alex, doing his best not to wake Amy, trudges up to bed. 

 

 

In the morning, he entrusts Karl Marx to Matt’s jeans pocket and heads into Wayland with the address of the suggested clinic. From the moment he parks to Prius to when they finally call him out of the waiting room, he’s permeated by a level of discomfort so new and so intense he regrets ever returning stateside at all. His hand had shook as he’d filled out the forms on the clipboard and returned them to the receptionist, and it hasn’t stopped since. When he explains the situation to the PA in the claustrophobic exam room, the blood pounds so loud in his ears that he can’t even hear the wobble in his voice. 

He watches the needle slide into his arm. The nurse tells him not to look, but he does anyway. It’s Miles who always had a problem with blood, not him. He’s opted for the more accurate, if more involved, test—and it’ll take a fortnight for the results. The blood flows thickly down the line, and he scrutinizes it as if it’s betrayed him.

He walks back into the mid morning sunlight feeling as though his brain has separated from his body and is floating somewhere above his head. 

Back behind the wheel of the Prius, he feels for Karl in his front pocket on instinct and is disheartened to find himself alone. For a few long moments, he rests his head against the steering wheel until he can take a breath that makes it past his esophagus. It’s noon by the time he pulls into traffic. 

On the way back into Cochituate via route 20, he passes a new strip mall, and then a garden center rises on his right. In a daze, he ends up buying a few perennials that look like they might be good for Matt’s yard. At the cash register it occurs to him, finally, that he might need to actually think about his bank account and employment and adult life in a way that doesn’t involve leeching off Matt’s charity, but his thoughts are so disconnected that he can’t plot a course to resolve such an issue. He pays for the flowers with his last few dollars and stumbles outside again. 

His conversation with Josh Homme comes back to him. That look of pity, the absence of any emails or offers since. The nature of academia; maybe his sabbatical in the east has cost him too much time. Irony, again—he and Miles had been so concerned with furthering their own careers and yet here they are. 

He spares a glance at the red-doored house as he passes it on his way to Matt’s, and then squints down the way once he’s stepped out of the car. There’s no sign of Miles in the front yard today, but his car is there - a mud brown Fiat. Apparently, he’s finally learned how to drive, though Alex doubts he does it particularly well. 

Alex breaks his gaze away. Here they are. 

 

 

He helps Matt plant the flowers around the front stoop, and it feels good to be in the dirt again. If he closes his eyes, he’s almost back in Pakistan, except there’s grass under his knees and the air is a little bit to thick. After a while, they break in order to wrap dusty hands around cold beers, backs against the stoop. Alex’s eyes wander, as they have a tendency to do - from the flawless domesticity of the house to the sweat at Matt’s temples. This is Matt’s element, he realizes. Surely, Matt knows that - and there must be some peace in knowing that he’s ended up exactly where he’s meant to.

_You’re so lucky,_ Alex thinks, but says only, “I should get a job.”

Matt shrugs. “Should you?”

“I haven’t heard anything from Homme.”

Matt nods, unsurprised. It’s too small an area and too competitive a field. He glances, languidly, back at the newly planted flowers. “You get those from Russell’s or Mahoney’s?”

“Russell’s, of course.”

“They’d probably hire you, with your green thumb and all,” Matt says. “At least it’d be something to do.”

“That’s a good idea,” Alex says genuinely, even if it feels strange to be making plans when he doesn’t even know the state of his own health yet. HIV may not be a death sentence but the idea of having it makes his chest tighten in a way that has rational thought all but impossible, and the future a dark abstraction at best. Maybe it’s better to make plans now, while he’s still caught in the surreality of it all. 

“Or we could bribe Josh with dinner,” Matt offers. “He’s fucking mad but I always liked him.”

  Alex snorts. “How drunk do you think he has to be before he gets me a job at Brown? He’s got quite a tolerance.”

“Break out the Everclear and it shouldn’t take any time at all,” Matt laughs, and Alex joins in. 

Matt’s meant to be here, obviously, but maybe Alex is too. 

 

 

Over the next fortnight, he falls into a routine, light though it may be. He babysits, he checks the mail obsessively for test results, and in the interval he sends another note to Homme and wanders into Wayland to put in an application at Russell’s garden center. He’s got no qualifications whatsoever beyond a few college botany classes of almost no practical value and the plants he used to keep on the windowsill in Providence, but it’s not like he’s got anything better to do. 

Except maybe stare at Miles’s red door and wait for something tight and unidentifiable to rise in his throat. 

It’s on a Tuesday in early June, when Alex, Amelia, and Karl Marx are lounging in the front yard, that the mailman drops something off not addressed to any Helderses. Alex attempts to show some level of restraint when opening the envelope, more for his own dignity than anything else, but nearly cuts himself on the paper regardless. He has to read the result three times before it makes any sense to him. 

He’s clean. 

Amy seems to have picked up on the tension in the air, and has stopped her toddler babbling to watch him for a moment. When he looks over at her and smiles, though, she goes back to grabbing fistfuls of grass and making vaguely happy noises. Alex, feeling a similar level of incoherent happiness, puts a hand over his mouth and grins into his palm. The relief nearly has him in tears, and it takes several long moments to calm himself down. Karl Marx, wrapped around his left ring finger, tastes the air in what Alex can only assume is the snake approximation of delight. 

He glances west. It’s not long before the red door calls to him again.


	5. Chapter 5

Miles doesn’t invite him in. He opens the door enough to lean his hip and shoulder against the doorframe, and then appraises Alex with his arms crossed. In the waning light of the afternoon, Alex finds his voice. 

“I thought I should tell you,” he starts, then has to pause to clear his throat. He’s been carrying the letter with the results around with him at all times, to remind himself that it is real and true, but now it seems especially present in his back pocket. “I got tested and I’m okay.”

Miles’s expression gives nothing away. “I could have told you that.”

“You understand I had to make sure, though,” Alex insists. “You know me. I couldn’t have slept otherwise.”

Miles just gives one stiff nod, then slinks back into the house. He leaves the door ajar, though, in what Alex can only assume is an invitation to follow. This seems to be the pattern now.

Inside, Miles is heading determinedly toward the kitchen. He says, over one shoulder, “I have some of your things.”

“Oh?”

“From the apartment. Your plants.”

“Oh.”

He turns back toward Alex, arms burdened with three of the potted plants once kept along the windowsill in Providence. “I let some of them die,” Miles says, voice carefully neutral. “Soz.”

“S’okay.” Alex nods towards the turntable in the corner, and the accompanying stack of vinyl. “Aren’t some of those mine?”

“No,” Miles says shortly, with a scowl, and drops the plants haphazardly into Alex’s outstretched hands. His shoulders are tense, and he stalks toward the open door with only an expectant glare back at Alex. 

“Everything alright?” Alex asks, and suspects he will regret it.

“Fine.”

“You seem tense.” Alex approaches cautiously, as though Miles is a feral animal. He shifts his elbow until a cacti rests more comfortably in the crook of his arm and meets Miles’s eyes with as much force as he dares. 

“I’m _fine_ , Alex,” Miles says, jaw rigid. 

Alex has stepped in closer now, so that barely a foot separates them in front of the cracked door. He says, “If it’s because of the test, you know it’s not that I don’t trust you—it’s just…”

“It’s not about the fucking test, Alex!” Miles snarls, voice too loud for the quiet of the house. It rings out for a few long seconds, and then disappears into a vacuum that leaves only a silence even more powerful than before. “And I don’t have any of your fucking records,” he adds, in nearly whisper, lacking any conviction whatsoever. His eyes drop to the floor.

Alex just stares for a moment, as the strange quietude of the moment seeps into both of them. Finally, he manages an, “okay,” and shifts until he can get one arm free. Without thinking, he reaches out to cup Miles’s face and kiss him briskly on the cheek. “Ta for me things. I’m off.”

He doesn’t expect Miles to call after him when he turns to leave, but that doesn’t stop him from being disappointed when the only sound that follows behind him is the click of the door as it latches shut. 

 

 

Alex has yet to hear back from Russell’s garden center, and in effort to quell any intruding thoughts concerning his own inadequacy, he convinces Matt to invite Homme over for dinner on the idea that it might, in some way, yield Alex a real job. Matt acquiesces, but the expression on his face as he does so suggests that he doesn’t hold out much hope for a productive result. 

Josh arrives on the doorstep on a Thursday, just after the usual summer evening rainstorm. They eat on the screened in porch, surrounded by cooling, damp air and crickets soundchecking for the encroaching night. Josh is in good spirits, and it’s contagious—the evening quickly becomes less about bribery and dissolves into something more familiar, more ancient. Between drinks and with every intake of breath, when the world blurs, it feels just like it did, back in the apartment in Providence; everyone a little plastered and a little warm and a little volatile. 

As night settles in fully, he ends up lying in the dewy grass of the backyard, Homme sitting cross legged beside him and weaving grass shreds into a long chain. How he maintains the dexterity to do this while absolutely sozzled, Alex doesn’t know. 

“You know about Miles?” Alex asks, out of the blue, and hardly registers his own impulsivity. 

Josh doesn’t look up from his task. His broad back, clothed in a black jacket, is even darker than the night. “Yes.”

In his current state, Alex can only offer a choked sigh in response, and then presses his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. He lets out a long breath. Josh hears him exhale, and twists around to meet his eyes for several long moments. He lays a heavy hand on Alex’s ankle and declares, words slurring slightly, “I don’t think I can make it home.” 

“Okay,” Alex replies. Brody and the kids are at her parents; Josh won’t be missed if he’s too drunk to drive back to Rhode Island. It’s not quite like it was, then—home is no longer just a short stumble or a blurry bus ride away. In fact, no one seems entirely sure where home is at all. 

 

 

In the morning, Josh heads home before dawn. Alex watches him go, then dresses and finds himself som aspirin and a slice of toast. The day is uncommitted; he’d be lying if that fact didn’t make him somewhat uncomfortable. He takes a long nap on one of the couches in the living room, and when he awakes Matt and Breana have left for work and Amelia has been delivered to daycare. 

Around midday, he gets a call from Russell’s to set up a second interview, and gets no particular joy from the news. The stagnancy of the day is settling in his bones, the same kind of stagnancy that he thinks might have driven him out of New England in the first place. How long can he continue to float, around Miles and around himself? He’s caught in an uneven orbit, circling the path forward but never taking it. 

He goes into Wayland, explains to his interviewer about the plants on the windowsill in Providence and his meager botanical experience in Asia. On the way back to Cochituate, everything along the narrow road seems dreadfully close, and small—the new CVS, the broad eighteenth century houses, Pelham Island road stretching off to the right and into the distance. It all closes in with each passing mile, until he passes the red door and it nearly crushes his windpipe completely. 

 

 

He is aware, on some internal level, that he does not deserve Matt as a friend and that it’s possible he never will. 

It’s after dinner, and they’re all curled into various corners of the living room couches, dozing while the telly drones and Amelia sleeps fitfully upstairs. Matt prods him with one foot to rouse him, and Alex props his chin up on one fist to look back at him quizzically.

“I wasn’t sure if you—” Matt falters, looking conflicted, eyes darting to Breana for support and finding her asleep in the chair opposite them. “We’re going up to Maine in a few weeks. Five Islands. A little vacation; no kids, just us and Nick and Kelly and, uh, Miles also.”

Alex just raises an eyebrow, waiting. 

“You could stay, and have the house to yourself, if you wanted. Or you could come with us. We rented a house up there—there’s an extra bedroom if you want it.” Matt scratches the back of his head with one large hand. “Dunno if it’d be awkward, though.”

Alex sits up a little straighter, and begins to chew one thumbnail pensively. “It probably would be.”

Matt waits.

“But I’ll come,” Alex decides. “We’re adults; we should try and sort things out.”

Judging by Matt’s expression, he does not look thrilled by the idea of Alex and Miles “sorting things out” on his vacation, but he says nothing. Instead, he nods languidly, then lays his head against Alex’s outstretched calf and closes his eyes. Helders is a merciful god. 

After a moment, Alex adjusts until he can lay his head on the sofa armrest, and joins him in sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks Stanzie - you'll see why!

The cranes are everywhere.

There’d been loads of them in Miles’s house, but now that he’s paying attention he sees them all around Matt’s place too, in every room but the guest bedroom that Alex has made his own. They’re folded out of receipts and sticky notes and the pages of magazines and even what looks to be actual origami paper - with beautiful, swirling designs and floral embellishments. If Miles has developed the habit of folding the birds to de-stress, than he sure as hell spends a lot of time doing so. 

He’s staring at one of them on a Friday night, his packed duffel bag by his feet, while Matt and Breana drop Amy off at her grandparents. The bird is perched atop a CD rack in the living room, and it’s folded from some sort of thick, fibrous paper with a tessellating pattern of blue hexagonal flowers. He stares at it a while longer, until he can discern whether it’s spying on him. 

It’s not. 

It’s three hours up to Five Islands, give or take. Give, mostly, in the heavy Friday night traffic. The route to Maine is the same route out to the Cape and Martha’s Vineyard, for the first few minutes, and this time of year half the population of eastern Massachusetts is spending weekends at the coast. It’s a struggle just to get to Waltham, but after that things begin to clear. Matt looks visibly disappointed by the lack of aggressive traffic. 

While the three of them will be in Maine by midnight, the rest of the cohort will not arrive until the Saturday. Miles, apparently, has some sort of work related engagement that will keep him in the Boston area until morning, and Nick and Kelly can’t get Hearst to his cousins’ before the weekend has officially commenced. Alex still thinks it a minor miracle that Miles hadn’t backed out all together when Matt mentioned Alex would be joining them for the long weekend. Or maybe miracle is the wrong word. He deflates against the headrest in the backseat, listening to the gentle murmur of Matt and Breana’s conversation in front of him and the drone of the car beneath. After a while, Matt plugs in the aux cord and the Libertines make the sunset even more melancholy than it already was destined to be. 

By the time the air begins to smell like the sea, night has set in. The dark obscures the details of the house Matt and Breana have rented, but Alex doesn’t much care anyway—he helps them carry the essentials into the foyer and then wanders down the slightly overgrown path toward where rock meets water. There is little sand to speak of; trees brush against dark stone and dark stone brushes against water the color of steel. The difference in color between the sea and the horizon is so minute that Alex has to squint to make it out. Across the inlet, a lobster restaurant casts light out into the moonless night. 

The thought of Miles’s morning arrival prods at his consciousness like the lapping of the ocean against the stone at his feet, or the gentle tug of the north Atlantic breeze. Every moment they’ve shared so far has been charged with something—a tension that seems based entirely on their mutual obstinance toward stimulating any kind of actual change. They’re waiting for a tipping point, but they’re both waiting for the other party to initiate it. 

Recalcitrance had been their downfall before, Alex reflects. Maybe it’s time to change that. 

 

 

In the morning, he wakes with his nose pressed into cheap, freshly laundered sheets that seem so ubiquitous to beach houses that there’s none of the normal disorientation surrounding an unfamiliar bed. Downstairs, there is movement, but for several long minutes he’s paralyzed, trying to decipher which voices are the ones floating up the stairs. After a time, he concedes them to be indecipherable, and trots down to face whoever their owners may be. 

Miles is wearing white jeans and a Hawaiian shirt in shades of green. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter with his ankles crossed and his sunglasses hanging from the front of his shirt and, when the sun hits his face, he looks more like himself than Alex has seen him in a long while. 

“Morning,” Miles greets, eyes expressionless, lifting a wine glass filled with orange juice. Matt is frying bacon to his right, and Breana is perched on the counter between them. By the dying smile on her face, Alex has intruded on the levity of the conversation, managing to thicken the air with only his presence. 

“Hi,” Alex replies, rather underwhelmingly, and lets his gaze slide downwards until it reaches his own dirty white sneakers. Alex had told Matt he planned to “sort things out” without taking into account the fact that he may fundamentally be a coward. 

Someone’s phone buzzes, and Breana reaches for it desperately to occupy herself. She says, “Nick and Kelly are en route. Should be here by lunch, apparently.”

“Breakfast is ready,” Matt announces, and they all pad silently toward the sliding door into the garden. It’s overgrown and aggressively verdant, and through the pines behind it Alex gets a glance at daylight illuminating the ocean he’d beheld the night before. A wrought iron table has been moved to sit beneath the shade of a squat sapling. 

They’ve settled into the meal before Breana breaks the silence. “So, Miles, you were conducting last night?”

Miles nods. “High school all-county thing. Two day clinic. They did well last night, I think. I would’ve driven up afterward but I’m supposed to get more sleep.” 

There’s something else lying beneath that statement, Alex registers, but he doesn’t want to dwell on it. He shivers slightly as a breeze blows up off the water and cuts through his well worn t-shirt. He and Miles are seated opposite each other, and they meet eyes for the first time since Miles’s arrival. There’s a moment, there, when Alex shivers and Miles looks at him; it’s so familiar and intimate that they simultaneously avert their gazes. 

Nick and Kelly arrive at noon, childless and buoyant. They all have Bloody Marys with lunch, fresh celery protruding from every glass. Alex slurps down his drink embarrassingly fast and then cracks open a bottle of wine before the hour is up. The rest of the group quickly follows suit, until any awkwardness is buried beneath a level of alcohol. Alex even works up the drunken courage to stare unabashedly at Miles from across the room for the remainder of the afternoon. 

The sun stays high into the summer evening. The last few hours have been occupied with drinking, and chatting, and one trip down to dip their lower halves into the cold water. Now, Alex and Breana have rolled up their pant legs and are sloshing through the rocky shallows, looking for shellfish. Alex’s head swirls every time he bends over, but he manages to stay upright and keep his meager lunch in his stomach. There are mint juleps waiting back in the kitchen, prepared with Matt’s usual attention to detail, but Miles blocks the path back to the house when Alex and Breana leave the water. 

Alex stops abruptly, and for a moment they appraise each other silently. He’s peripherally aware of Breana leaving his side and slipping around Miles at a pace just short of a run. When it’s just the two of them, Miles motions over his shoulder. “Walk with me.”

Alex follows without hesitation. He rolls the ankles back down on his pleated trousers as a chill begins to set in, and trots behind Miles through the back garden and around the side of the house. Then it’s down the stubby, sandy driveway and onto the empty, one lane road that encircles the inlet. They fall into step as the trees rustle above them. On the horizon, Alex can see a freighter making slow progress toward Portland. 

“I still love you,” Alex blurts. “I did when I left and I did the entire time I was gone and I still do now.”

Alex is drunk. He’s not sure if he means the words he’s saying or if they’re just what he’s always expected himself to say. Did he really love Miles when he stepped out of the Sheldon street apartment for the last time? He’ll decide in the morning. 

Miles stops walking, and looks at him. “Oh, fuck you,” he says, and it’s got no hint of the affection it might once have had. “You don’t get to pull that tortured, heartbroken shit. _You_ left.”

“Please, Miles.”

“Please what? You broke my heart once and got off scot-free, and you still get to linger around and disrupt what’s left of my life. That’s fucking bullshit, mate.” Even in the waning light, Alex can see that Miles’s lip has curled in disgust. 

Alex shakes his head vehemently. “I didn’t break your heart. Don’t say that.”

Miles ignores him and persists. “ _And_ I fucking saw Josh Homme leave Helders’s house early in the morning a few weeks back.”

Finally, Alex feels something like anger flare. “What’re you getting at? And why do you care, anyways?”

“Homme’s married now, you know. Christ.”

Alex lets out an exasperated snort, but won’t let himself say anything else. He’ll plead the fifth, and then maybe Miles won’t go any further. This is not how he thought this would go. 

Miles is walking again, and they’re still in step with each other. Alex prays for a cigarette to fall out of the sky to replace the pack he’s left back at the house. Miles’s gaze is firmly on the road ahead, despite the fact there are no cars in sight. 

Alex points down a bisecting road off to their left. “Olympia Snowe lives down there, apparently.”

“Who’s Olympia Snowe?”

“Former senator.”

“How do you know that?”

Alex shrugs. “I have a lot of free time.” 

Alex must have one endearing quality, at least, though he can’t imagine what it is—because in the next moment, Miles has wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him into a vicious, overwhelming kiss.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait on this one! I'm afraid the next one might take a little while too, but after the middle of June I'm gonna have a helluva lot more time to write, so hopefully we'll be looking at some longer, more frequent chapters in the near future.  
> One a side note, it feels strangely dissonant to write so much angst for these two when they're so obviously happy on stage....I'm a slut for unhappiness though so fuck it

There’s a long moment where reality does not feel the need to encroach— where he could be back in the kitchen in Providence, Miles’s lips pressed against his, slipping into their old rhythm. It’s not quite right, though; it’s a little bit off. A little bit more syncopated than it should be, maybe, or on the back side of the beat rather than the front. 

The strength of the embrace has pushed Miles off-balance—he seems to wake up when his shoes hit the soft growth at the side of the road, and abruptly he’s pulling away from Alex and averting his eyes. Alex doesn’t step back, though, waiting until their gazes meet. 

Miles sighs. “We’re not doing this.”

“You started it,” Alex retorts, feeling decidedly puerile in his words and his inability to stop them. 

“It was a remnant.” Miles starts walking again. “Nothing, really.”

Alex snorts. “What the fuck? You can’t just do that.”

Miles stops, turning back toward him with a look on his face somewhere between disinterest and disgust. “I can do whatever I want.”

Alex’s legs are moving of their own accord to catch up with the other man. They’re heading back toward the house, now, and the forest around them is barely visible in the night. Miles speaks again.

“I _can_ do whatever I want, but I won’t.” He’s got his hands in his pockets, and is walking slow enough that they fall back into step quickly. “I’m a bit of a biohazard, as it were.”

“It’s not impossible. Like, I read about it. There are ways to be careful and—”

It’s barely visible in the night, but Miles sends him a warning look. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

There’s a only a few lights left on in the house by the time they get back to it. Their respective bedrooms are both at the end of the third floor hallway, and Alex wonders if this is a little bit of social engineering on Matt’s part. Regardless, they don’t speak as they come up the stairs, and Alex thinks about letting the silence continue until he reaches his door and abruptly changes his mind. 

He turns on his heel and presses a light kiss to Miles’s lips, letting a hand graze the other’s cheekbone. “Good night,” he murmurs, and when they meet eyes it appears, for a second, like maybe Miles doesn’t want him to go. 

Alex looks away, slipping into his own room and letting the door shut with a barely perceptible click. 

 

 

In the morning, Alex gets up before the rest of the house, and writes out a single sentence on the back of a receipt he finds in his pocket. He treads lightly across the hallway until he can kneel at the threshold of Miles’s room. There’s no detectable sound from the other side of the door, so he folds the receipt in half and slides it under. It’s an old ritual; he wonders if Miles will appreciate it. He prods the glossy paper with his fingers until it disappears into the room. 

 

 

Matt has rented a speedboat for today, with the intention of doing some island hopping, but no one besides Alex makes it out of bed before noon. So Alex spends the morning lying prostrate on rock by the ocean, shirt off and book held above his head, until Matt shouts at him that they’re finally getting ready to go. 

The boat is 25 feet long and open air, with more than enough seats for everyone to spread out beneath the sun. Alex ends up with his head in a very hungover Nick’s lap, having a languid conversation about whether Alex is likely to ever be gainfully employed again. Lying beneath the sky in shorts and a loose cotton button-up, it feels like a much less pressing issue than it probably is. 

“Have you looked at some of the second tier places?” Nick offers, sipping at a hair-of-the-dog Bloody Mary.

Alex shakes his head with a snort. 

“Don’t bitch,” Nick laughs. “You have a well prestigious degree that would be an even bigger deal at a non-Ivy. If you went some place kind of unremarkable, you’d be king shit of fuck mountain.”

“It’d be better than the garden center, I guess.”

“Don’t be a knob,” Kelly adds helpfully. 

Alex swings to his feet with the intention of getting a drink, and finds that Miles has joined Matt at the helm. The Scouser is holding a vodka tonic and looking far more put together than anyone else on the boat. Surely, he feels Alex’s gaze on his back, but he doesn’t turn, keeping his sunglassed eyes on the gray and green coast passing them on both sides. 

By sunset, they’re all tired and drunk enough to agree to moor next to a lobster restaurant for dinner. Inside, Alex feels just a tad too warm, sandwiched between Breana and Matt in a way that definitely seems a little parental. Miles is seat diagonally across from him, next to Kelly, and seems to only manage to pick at his food for the rest of the evening. Alex feels strange staring; he thinks about the note he left this morning and then decides, abruptly, to not think about it. He takes to mutilating the mudbug on his plate and doesn’t look up again. 

The boat ride back is placid and hazy, an amalgam of sourceless light and ambient laughter. He doesn’t remember stepping back onto the shore, but then suddenly he’s in the kitchen of the rental and everyone else is upstairs and he’s alone, in a way that seems too sudden and too strange. He’s staring down at the counter and there’s a paper crane folded out of a familiar looking receipt. Alex’s hands are on it before he realizes what he’s doing. 

Unfolded, he finds his own familiar, half-capitalized letters:

_I love you always and in all ways._

There comes the sound of a door sliding open.

“Don’t unfold my cranes,” Miles says, not looking up while he searches for a new pack of cigarettes. The door onto the garden is open; Alex can see a full ashtray on the patio table next to one of the padded wicker chairs. 

Alex holds up the note. “You didn’t like it?”

Miles finds what he’s looking for and then straightens, squinting at him. “And don’t fucking play with me.”

“I’m not,” Alex insists, following him outside again. He closes the door behind them and pulls up a chair, sitting as close to Miles as he dares. 

In the low light created by the glow from the kitchen, Miles sends him an unreadable look, then lights a cigarette off his own and passes it over. Alex coughs through his first inhale—he’d unofficially quit while in India, and hasn’t yet bothered to decide whether he wants to restart. Once he recovers his breath, he hears Miles’s low laughter. 

“Fuck off,” Alex wheezes, grinning. 

He’s not sure, then, who initiates it, but suddenly they’re both leaning through the smoke and Miles’s hands are in his hair and it’s different, he thinks, than last night—now, it’s a little closer to what it should be. Alex closes his eyes and lets Miles’s tongue trace his bottom lip. 

When they pull away, they don’t go far. Their noses are still brushing, their eyes still half-lidded, when Alex asks, “Are you still angry?”

Miles sighs; Alex feels the warm breath rebound off his skin. Then Miles is pulling back and running a hand over his face, eyes drifting toward the glimmer of moonlight on water through the trees in front of them. Alex is still leaning forward in his chair, his hands still open as though he’s waiting for the return of Miles’s embrace. The silence stretches. 

“Did you hear what happened to Zach?” Miles says, finally. 

“Zach Dawes? From back in Providence?”

“Yeah.” Miles takes a long drag. “I guess you wouldn’t have heard. We lost him about a year ago.”

Alex feels his hands begin to grow cold. “From what?”

“The fuck do you think?” Miles shrugs. “He didn’t know he had it until it was too late.”

“Holy fucking christ,” Alex murmurs. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, in this day and age. Like, _you’re_ getting treated and all and—”

“Yeah, but you still have to think to get tested,” Miles says. His voice is even. He’s detached; it’s been a year and maybe he’s come to terms with it. Alex feels himself shiver. “It’d already progressed to AIDS. And then he got pneumonia, I think. I visited him in the hospital, a couple of days before.”

Alex waits. “And?”

It comes out quiet. “He wasn’t awake.”

Alex has forgotten about his cigarette; his hands are still outstretched. “Does he have a headstone somewhere?”

Miles nods. 

“I want to see it.”

“Okay.” Miles’s gaze flickers to Alex’s expectant, half-open palms. After a moment, he entwines his long fingers with one of them, and then lets their linked hands dangle between the chairs. And Alex spends a long time trying to fathom who is comforting who.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really excited to get back to this!!

Alex has settled on peonies, though he’s forgotten his reasoning for this already. He’s only just started at Russell’s this week, and they have him manning the cash register--apparently his meager experience with windowsill cacti isn’t enough to grant him the right to wander the greenhouse and advise customers on fertilizers and trowels. Something, though, about the display of peonies by the door had struck him, and now he’s got them clutched in his hand as they catch the late morning sunlight and turn an even more luminous shade of pink. 

Miles glances at them and says, eyes unreadable, “Good choice.”

They’re trotting over a verdant green hill on a dusty footpath, passing occasionally though the shade of ancient oaks. Alex has worn one of the few t-shirts he owns without holes, and this fact combined with the peonies adds to the overall feeling of inexplicable formality associated with this whole situation. Miles is smoking the last nub of a cigarette, and wearing a crisp white sweater with red and black stripes across the chest. He’s got dark circles beneath his drooping eyes, and for a moment Alex feels a stab of guilt for dragging him out here. And that thought, inevitably, leads him to thoughts of Zach. 

As a film student at RISD, Zach had been part of their social circle in Providence, and the fact that he was also gay meant that they often ended up at the same clubs and parties. They’d even invited him back to the Sheldon street apartment every now and again, for days and nights, and found that his charm knew no bounds. Alex might still have a polaroid around of Zach sitting at their breakfast table, smiling his round-faced smile and laughing at something Miles was going on about. Or maybe Miles has the picture, or perhaps it’s been lost somewhere in the chasm between them. He’s going to have to dig it up, he thinks--have another look at it and decide if it’s the beauty of the moment he’s remembering or just the loveliness of the picture itself. 

Miles, eventually, drifts to a stop in front of a small rectangular plaque on the crest of a hill, the lettering and dates illuminated in polished bronze. Someone’s left a wreath of white flowers before them. Alex squats, and presents the peonies as an offering, careful not to cover Zach’s name. He wants to make sure the sun can still reach it. 

“You said you saw him in the hospital?” Alex asks, without standing up. 

Miles takes a long time to answer. It’s clear that whatever he saw still spooks him, if the way his face is nearing toward ashen is any indication. “He looked really bad,” Miles says finally. “Had a couple opportunistic infections by the time he realized he should see a doctor. They basically told him it was the end once he got pneumonia too.”

“Fuck,” Alex mutters, letting his head fall into one of his hands and taking a long breath. He doesn’t have the strength to be tactful anymore; not with Miles. “Is he the one that gave HIV to you, do you think?”

Miles gives him a warning look, and shrugs. “Dunno.”

Alex’s palm slides from his forehead to his mouth, and he bites down hard on the soft flesh. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to wipe his mind of all thought, and all feeling. Miles doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t walk away, and there’s something tender in this act of solidarity. The sun reaches its noon position, and the bronze letters reflect light onto the peonies, and Alex holds himself together by sniffling until he can get a hand free to wipe at his eyes. 

Miles says, “You ready?”

Alex nods stiffly, and finally stands up to his full height. He can feel Miles’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t look over. 

 

 

Miles invites him to his house for a light lunch, but Alex is still too rattled to realize how unexpectedly charitable this is. In the kitchen, Miles puts together a few tomato and cheese sandwiches, and then they eat on the back patio while it’s still partially shaded by the house. Alex gets halfway through his sandwich before he sees the abominable state of the raised flower boxes running along the building’s back wall. 

“You have to let me fix that,” he says, pointing toward the offenders. 

Miles sees his resolute expression, and gives a small smirk. “Alright, then.”

So Alex spends his afternoon grasping weeds between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing the skin raw until the dirt is freed. He lets Karl Marx out of his pocket, and the snake curls happily around the shell of his ear to bask in the sun. Miles sits on the patio, feet propped on the frosted glass of the table, sunglasses concealing exactly where his gaze rests. He’s got a magazine open on his knees, though, so Alex doesn’t look over his shoulder. The heat of the day reaches its peak by mid afternoon, and sweat trickles down his back beneath his t-shirt, but there’s something satisfying in the rhythm of his own pulls and of Miles’s page turns and the silence in between. 

Eventually, Alex hears the sound of ripping paper, and looks over one damp shoulder to find Miles tearing a glossy magazine page into a perfect square. He begins to fold, and Alex wanders over, eyes on Miles’s lean, adept fingers. 

“Will you make me one?” Alex asks, once the creases begin to resemble the familiar crane. 

Miles smiles without showing his teeth. “No, they’re for me.” He makes the last fold, and the completed bird drops from his pinched fingers onto the table. Alex wipes at the perspiration on his forehead, and brushes his hair behind his ears with his gaze still on the crane. 

Miles rises to his feet. “I’ll get you something to drink.”

He doesn’t make it far. 

They collide within moments of making eye contact, and Alex brings his topsoil-coated hands up to cradle Miles’s face. His lips are salty with sweat, and soon it blends with the sharp tang of tomato still on Miles’s tongue. His hands grasp at the sweat slicked hairs at the base of Alex’s neck. The only sound is the slide of their mouths against each other and the rush of their ragged breathing. 

Alex doesn’t pull away until he can’t hold in his need for air any longer, but they don’t stay separated for very long. Miles is pulling into a bone-crushing hug, like it’s the only thing keeping him afloat, and for a moment Alex is too surprised to reciprocate. Miles doesn’t let him go, though, and soon Alex is pressing his nose into Miles’s shoulder and squeezing him just hard, as though trying to compress three years into one embrace. He sees the glint of Zach’s headstone behind his eyelids and holds on tighter. 

 

 

They end up on the couch in Miles’s living room, kissing desperately but very carefully not doing anything more. Alex’s sweat cools on his skin even as new beads appear at his hairline. Miles is lying on his side, his hands splayed warmly over Alex’s spine, their lips moving languidly and their feet intertwining. Alex can’t think about the situation too long before he questions the reality of it - it’s too lovely to be true. He wraps his arms around Miles’s thin frame and pulls him closer, so that their bodies are flush against each other, so that they only need to angle their heads to continue the kiss. 

Alex forgets the entire concept of time and space, until the doorbell rings. 

“Don’t get it,” Alex breaks the kiss just long enough to murmur against Miles’s lips. 

“It’s Taylor. She’s got her Juilliard audition on Tuesday.”

Alex’s only attempt at persuasion is another kiss, but Miles is already disentangling himself, dragging a warm thumb across Alex’s cheekbone as he sits up. “It’ll only be an hour.”

Alex, however, is slowly coming out of the haze of the last few minutes and it occurs to him that he doesn’t know what lies on the other end of that hour. He doesn’t know how far Miles will let him go, or how far it’s even safe to go, or whether he’s misread the situation entirely. He looks to Miles for answers, but the other man won’t meet his eyes. Miles gives him one more brisk, open mouthed kiss before pushing himself to his feet. He leaves Alex, sprawled across the sofa and halfway undone, and heads for the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *eyebrow wiggle*

Alex wraps himself in a blanket to the sound of Taylor playing something Russian from the back bedroom. Without Miles pressed against him, his body is cold in a way that’s almost embarrassing. He pushes his feet between the couch cushions and shivers. 

Time passes; he must fall asleep because now Miles is shaking him awake, and he can hear the crunch of Taylor peeling out of the driveway. The light has faded into evening, the last rays of the sun casting an orange glow onto every flat surface and leaving everything else in lacy shadow. Miles has settled on the edge of the couch, a hand curled around Alex’s shoulder to coax him into consciousness. The lines around the Scouser’s eyes are pronounced again; without thinking, Alex reaches up to run a hand through the short bristle of hair atop Miles’s head. Miles leans into the touch, eyes closing, like it was all he ever wanted and was too afraid to ask for. 

“You can sleep here, if you want,” Miles says, barely audible. “But that’s all. I won’t risk anything else, protection or not.”

“Okay,” Alex replies, voice soft, like the quietness of the evening, the rustle of the trees and the cars on the road and primordial roar of the crickets, is delicate and due to shatter at any moment. He takes to nodding instead, and then pulls at the fabric at Miles’s elbow until Miles sinks down into his embrace. Alex wraps his arms around him from behind, presses his nose into the other man’s shoulder, into the curve of his neck. Eventually, he nods off again, curled around Miles like no time has passed at all. 

 

 

It’s surreal.

Alex wakes before dawn to find himself still entangled with Miles, halfway enveloped by the gap between the couch cushions. He nudges Miles awake, and without any verbal communication necessary they end up stumbling toward the bedroom, eyes bleary with sleep. Alex is aware that they will have to talk about this eventually—jump through the mental and emotional hoops to try to find some meeting place in the darkness between them. For now, though, he’s content to throw back the light summer blanket and crawl into Miles’s arms. There’s a bit of a cognitive dissonance, he thinks, between what he suspects he deserves and what’s been delivered but he’s already falling asleep again before he can dwell on it. Miles murmurs something against his hair, but he doesn’t catch it, and then he’s dreaming about windowsill cacti and the Deccan plateau. 

When he surfaces again, he’s alone. 

Something by Boccherini, though, wafts from the spare bedroom, and Alex realizes he’s missed hearing Miles fill the empty spaces with his cello. In Providence, it had been so common that it became ambient noise; now, it rings with crystalline rarity. Alex doesn’t move for a few long moments, swathed in the sheets and the music. 

After a while, he musters the strength to pad down the hallway and lean his hip against the doorframe to watch. Miles’s fingers dart across the fingerboard, shifting and vibrating in impossible, mysterious patterns. He doesn’t look up, head bobbing along with the music. Alex tries not to appear too obviously awed. 

Miles lifts his bow from the string and lets the last note linger in the soft morning air. He looks up, finally, and says, “Sorry to wake you.”

Alex just smiles, and then crosses the room to kiss him like his life depends on it. 

Miles shifts his cello until it rests on the floor beside his chair, freeing his hands to cup Alex’s face. Alex pulls back and says, “We should talk, yeah?”

Something flickers in Miles’s eyes. “I have to be somewhere.”

“What?”

“It’s a quartet thing—I have to be at this church, like, well soon.” He’s already rising to his feet, dragging his cello case closer to him without looking up. 

“Can I come watch you perform?” Alex asks, on a whim. 

Miles raises an eyebrow at him. “Sure?”

“Don’t act so surprised that I’d want to come,” Alex says, trying not to let the hurt creep into his voice. 

“I’m not,” Miles replies quickly, clicking the last few latches on his case into place. He scratches the back of his head self-consciously. “It’s at one. In Watertown.”

“Okay.” Alex runs a hand through his hair, deems it clean enough to finesse. “Just text me the address and I’ll be there.”

Miles looks somewhere between perplexed and disturbed by his enthusiasm, but nods anyway. And then he’s on his way out, leaving Alex in the empty house with a quick kiss. It’s an old habit. The space between Providence and Cochituate has a tendency to fluctuate when he’s with Miles. 

He’s got an hour before he has to be in Watertown, and still has Matt’s car; before he even realizes what he’s doing, he’s standing in Russell’s, inspecting the flower section in much the same way he did before going to visit Zach. This time around, though, he avoids the peonies, with the knowledge that they’re never going to look quite right again. In the end, he settles on roses, because they seem representative of the simplicity that every other part of his life lacks. 

 

 

Alex has already forgotten what sect the church is by the time he slips into one of the available pews. The event, though, seems to be more community-oriented rather than denominational. Alex registers it to be something school board related, then tunes out the drone of the various amplified voices. Hunched over the roses in his lap, he digs around for the pen in his jacket pocket, and scribbles out a few words for later on the back of the event program.

Miles’s quartet plays a few vaguely familiar things, for the sake of the laymen audience. Their setlist adds a soothing texture to the afternoon, blending with the light that drips off the stained glass windows and onto the roses. This is a world Alex could get used to. 

Afterwards, Miles slips out a side door without much fanfare. Alex follows him out, and finds the Scouser with his feet perched on the curb, adjusting the cello on his back and lighting a cigarette with his free hand. 

“Hey,” says Alex, and Miles turns towards him with something like surprise twisting his features. “That was lovely.”

“Ta,” replies Miles, and offers Alex the cigarette with a smirk. “Don’t choke on it this time, yeah?”

Alex devolves into a mock-offended pout, and manages to take a drag without incident. He offers the roses to Miles. “I got these for you.”

“I feel like you’re just relishing in your Russell’s employee discount,” Miles says, but he takes them anyway, and smiles. 

“Maybe.” Alex digs, for a moment, in his back pocket, searching for the program he’d written on earlier, now folded to hide what he wrote in a blank spot on the second to last page. “And this.”

Miles seems to intuit what it is, so he doesn’t read it immediately. Instead, he frowns. “Do you wanna get dinner tomorrow? Like, in the city?”

Alex’s eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah. Definitely. I get off at five, so anytime after that, I s’pose.”

“I’ll pick you up at Matt’s.” Miles is still frowning, but Alex is undeterred. This is progress, he thinks. Or something like it.

“I’ll see you then.” Alex trots buoyantly off into the parking lot, swinging the keys to Prius around one finger. Halfway to the car, he turns back to find Miles bent over the program, finally reading the note Alex has scribbled there. 

_Your laugh has the same wondrous, divine patter as the rain falling upwards and hitting the ceiling of the sky._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A turning point, you could say.

Alex spends a few moments contemplating whether to have Matt babysit Karl for the evening, before deciding that the snake is probably well-behaved enough to make it through dinner without incident. Alex tucks him into the breast pocket of a mustard-colored suit he’d picked up at a thrift shop in Framingham. 

“Looking sharp,” Matt says, through a mouthful burrito, when Alex comes down the stairs. Alex smiles appreciatively, even as Matt’s expression darkens. “Look, I dunno what your intentions are, tonight or otherwise, but don’t play with him, yeah? He doesn’t deserve that.”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’m ‘playing’ with him?”

Matt just shakes his head. “All I’m saying is that you’ve put him through enough.”

“Why is everyone acting like I’m some kind of villain?” Alex splutters. “You know what happened. It were mutual. We both fucked up.”

“Yeah, but you can’t really deny that he got the raw end of the deal, overall,” Matt retorts calmly. “At least you got some of what you wanted—India and all.”

“It’s not my fault.” He hates how the words feel on his tongue—too loud, too high-pitched. 

Matt presses a finger to his own mouth and points upward to where Amelia’s taking her afternoon nap in the upstairs bedroom. Still, he takes in Alex’s wide eyes, and shows mercy. 

“I know,” Matt says quietly, then wraps an arm around Alex’s shoulders and kisses him on the head. “Be careful.”

 

 

Miles, it turns out, is as bad a driver as Alex predicted the moment he found out that Miles had learned to drive. Still, it works to his advantage—he’s as bad as anyone else in Boston, and seeming to have no awareness of the turn signal whatsoever allows them to squeeze into places they shouldn’t and cut off those who deserve cutting off. 

Alex has bought more flowers—it’s becoming a habit. Today, it’s a handful of jonquils, resplendent and light. He sets them on his lap and watches Miles swerve through traffic on Boston Post Road. The Scouser’s dressed in powder blue suit pants and a white polo. Something about Alex’s mustard and Miles’s blue seems complimentary. Maybe it’s not the colors, but they match nonetheless. 

“We should go eat in Providence some time,” Alex says buoyantly. “See if our favorites hold up to the memory.”

Miles sends him a brief and inscrutable look. He doesn’t reply for a long moment. “You been there at all since you got back?”

“I had tea with Josh Homme to talk about job stuff,” Alex says carefully, eyes firmly on the dashboard. He’s thinking about that conversation they had that first night in Maine, walking along the darkened road. Homme had not been a welcome subject. “Didn’t have the nerve to have a look at campus. Bad vibes.”

Miles doesn’t look at him. “No shit.”

Wayland is behind them before Alex has the courage to speak again. “I wanted to ask, um—of course, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I know,” Miles says, raising an imperious eyebrow.

“If you don’t mind, it’s about Brown: did they let you go or did you leave on your own?”

They hit a spot of traffic, and he watches Miles chew on one thumbnail. He can’t tell if it’s an action that’s pensive, or nervous. Finally, he speaks. “I dunno, really. Things got kind of weird there, for a while. I think I was in shock. After the whole thing with Nathan, I think they wanted me out of their hair, but I needed to keep the health insurance. I technically still work there, but it’s only in spirit. TAs do all the work. It’s been a blow to the program.”

“What are you gonna do?” Alex asks. “That seems like such a temporary arrangement.”

Miles shrugs, and fixes him with a vaguely condescending look. “I’m not really looking past tomorrow, mate.”

Then they hit city traffic, and Miles is pointing out restaurant possibilities, despite the inexplicable knot in Alex’s stomach. 

 

 

They end up in a booth at a sushi place near government center, and if Alex cranes his neck he can see just the slightest sliver of the harbor. He alternates between staring at the strip of water and staring into the darkness of Miles’s gaze when his eyes flick up from the meal every few moments. After picking around the edges of his food, Miles says, “How’s Russell’s treating you?”

“It’s alright. It’s good until I can get a real job.” Alex shrugs, then frowns and points his fork toward Miles’s nearly untouched plate. “Are you okay? 

“It’s the meds,” Miles says, unabashed. “I don’t always feel up to eating.”

“That’s fucked up.” Alex takes a long swig from his second margarita, trying to loosen the tension in his shoulders. It’s starting to work. “It’s fucked up that it’s supposed to be helping and you only feel worse.”

Miles just sighs, like it’s a familiar sentiment. One so familiar that he can create and discard it in the same second. “I know you want to get back into academia and all, but Russell’s seems like a pretty good place to kill the time. At least for the free flowers, if nothing else.”

Alex catches the levity in Miles’s eye, and grins. “They’re not free. I spent eight dollars on those. It was either them or three bags of Twiglets.”

Miles snorts. “I’m honored.”

Alex laughs, and he can’t tell if the tension’s actually broken, or if he’s just drunk through it. Miles, though, is smiling in that way that once seemed to be his most natural expression and now feels like an ephemeral gift. After dinner, the day’s proximity to the solstice means that the sun has yet to dip below the horizon, painting the city in hues that seem to match the pastel of Miles’s pants and the softness of his expression. 

They wander across parking lots, beneath high-rise apartments and hotels and art installations, edging closer to the gunmetal surface of the harbor. At some point they begin holding hands; Alex isn’t really sure how it happens, or who initiates it. Just as the last vestiges of sunlight are peeking out over the water, pale orange and whitish pink and quiet blue, Alex finds a railing to perch his elbows against. A cool ocean breeze rolls in, stirring the hairs on his neck. The noise of the city is far off, blocked out by the buildings crowding the shore—Alex finds the abrupt silence to be almost frightening. Miles leans against the railings beside him and says, “I’m worried that you’re only doing all this because you feel guilty about leaving.”

Alex twists his mouth in thought. “I don’t think so. I generally consider us to be mutually responsible for what happened.”

“So you don’t regret it?” He sounds hurt, but when Alex turns his neck to look at him, Miles’s eyes are blank. 

“I regret the circumstances. I wanted you to come—I really did. I regret everyday that you weren’t on the plane with me that Friday.”

Miles smiles grimly. “So it’s my fault, yeah?”

“You know that’s not what I’m getting at,” Alex retorts. “Do you want me to feel guilty or not? I honestly can’t tell.”

“I’m just trying to figure out what the fuck you want.”

Alex worries his bottom lip for a few long moments, eyes on the monotonous shifting of the water below. “If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have given up what we had. I would’ve found some other way….fuck, I dunno. It’s done now, I guess. I just want things to be like they were. It took me a little while to figure that out, I think.”

Miles just shakes his head, that same grim smile curling the edges of his lips. Alex feels something frantic rise inside him; he’s still fighting the past’s tightening grip on his throat, but the words start flowing. “Look, I dunno what to say about how we left things except that it was fucked. But I can say, _now_ , that you’re all there is for me. I should’ve realized it sooner.” He takes a deep breath, keeps his eyes pointed downwards. “It’s you. It was always you.”

He feels Miles’s eyes on him, but isn’t quite ready to look up yet. He’s not sure he can face more incredulity, more distrust, and stay intact. Finally, though, Miles lays a hand on his arm, and it’s so far from accusatory that he manages to lift his head. 

Miles nods, and the brown of his eyes is soupy and bottomless. “Okay.”

It’s an exoneration and a proclamation of love and a leap forward all rolled into one. The sincerity is in the brevity; he wouldn’t trust any further declarations. Alex has done enough for both of them in an attempt to fill a three year hole. When Alex croaks out, “Yeah?” he’s not even sure what he’s asking, except that he wants to hear the confirmation again. 

“Yeah,” Miles affirms, and there’s light in his eyes and in his smile. “Okay.”

Alex keeps one hand on the railing and wraps the other around Miles’s waist to pull him into a long, soft kiss. Miles’s hands come up to his cheek, to the hair at the nape of his neck. They don’t pull away until Alex’s heartbeat resonates in his lips, in the tips of his fingers—and the last light of the day has slipped away beneath the water.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something magnificent has happened: I got tickets to see TLSP in Boston! Which means that it is entirely possible that the next installment of Endless Blue will be written in the actual geographic location in which it takes place, since both Providence and Wayland are also on the weekend's itinerary. Anybody else going to to the Boston show????

Summer drags on, and Alex slowly spends more and more time at work and at Miles’s. Enough that his vague existence begins to feel almost natural, if not pleasant. 

“Are you happy to have me out from under foot?” Alex asks, when he gets home one evening to find Breana grilling in the backyard and Matt watching reality telly on the couch. 

“I’m happy that you’re happy,” Matt replies sanguinely, and offers him a beer and the spot next to him. “Or whatever it is that you are.”

At first, it had been under the guise of fixing the raised flower boxes, but eventually Alex’s hours at Miles’s house had stretched, and warped into something new. His time in the garden is complimented by time in the house, in Wayland, in the city—old rhythms in a new place, with a new edge to every word and embrace. It’s not quite halcyon, but it’ll do. 

At some point, Alex finds himself in possession of the number of Matt’s GP, and then he’s making an appointment and telling Miles that he has to head into work early. He’s not entirely sure why he feels the need to be clandestine—maybe because things still feel a little tenuous. Miles, himself, feels like a tenuous creature. Whereas Alex feels lighter than he has in months, Miles still seems like he’s waiting for the next wave. For Alex to slip off again on another cold Friday morning. There’s something melancholy in the air that Alex doesn’t quite understand, that Miles won’t quite explain. 

On the Tuesday appointment, the doctor treats him gently, understands his discomfort. It’s a fragile discussion, but Alex is becoming an expert in fragile things. 

“It’s an extremely effective prophylactic,” she’s saying. “As long as you take it consistently. But it’s only one pill a day, and side effects are usually reported to be minimal.”

He’s only said the word _HIV_ once in the entire conversation, and it seemed to have them both a little taken aback as it rung in the silence after his explanation of the situation with Miles. It had stayed in the air long after they’d delved into clinical, distant details—he’d googled enough to know the basics of the drug meant to shield the partners of HIV positive people during unprotected sex, but trusted her mellifluously confident assurances far more than his own rudimentary research. 

“I’ll write you a prescription,” Dr. Ware says, reaching toward her computer. “But you really need to talk to your partner about all this. Secrecy is always such a mess.”

Alex contemplates his fingernails. “I know.”

 

 

“CVS is the closest pharmacy, don’t you think?”

In his mind it had been a question phrased innocuously enough, but Miles takes one look at him and knows immediately. Alex widens his eyes, reaching for insouciance. There’s a long moment where they just stare—Alex perched on the edge of the couch, open book still in his hands, and Miles on the threshold of the kitchen, long fingers wrapped around the necks of two beers.

“I s’pose it is,” he replies quietly, eyes narrowed. He hasn’t moved. Alex lets out an exasperated sigh and finally breaks eye contact, trying to fight the inexplicable guilt building in his gut. Despite its obvious necessity, this is not the conversation Alex wants to have. 

Miles crosses the room and takes the seat across from him before he speaks, pads of his fingers digging into the bridge of his nose. “I won’t take the risk. Fucking miracle drug or not.”

“Miles, that’s unreasonable,” Alex says softly, suddenly exhausted. There was a time, he’s fairly sure, when Miles didn’t fight him at every turn, when there wasn’t such a potent bitterness in the black of Miles’s eyes. It takes him a long time to remember that this new version isn’t Miles’s fault. That it isn’t anyone’s fault. “It’s not even a risk. It’s safe. This isn’t 1987; no one’s going to die.”

“You’re just being selfish.” Miles is frowning volatilely at the floor. “Again.”

Abruptly, Alex finds himself on his feet. “What the fuck, Miles? Do you really think I’d risk me own health on something like this I wasn’t sure it was safe? It’s safer than condoms. It’s safer than anything.”

“How am I supposed to trust you when you’re thinking with your cock?” Miles snarls. “Give me a fucking break. It won’t be like it was. Nothing is.”

“Then why the fuck am I here?” Alex is still on his feet, a coffee table separating him from Miles. “What do you want from me? I’m trying, Miles, I really fucking am, and—”

“Get out.”

Alex doesn’t hear the words at first, just the inflection. He doesn’t need to be told a second time, though. Miles is bent over, eyes on the floor again, by the time Alex lets the door slam behind him. 

 

 

At first, Alex mistakes the burning end of Miles’s cigarette for another firefly, until he hears the crunching footsteps over sun scorched grass. Miles is striding softly across the few backyards that separate his and Matt’s houses, leaving behind a trail of smoke that stands in contrast to the black of the tree line. The night is just overcast enough that the sky is a dark gray slate, lit in part by the reflection of the lights of Wayland in the distance. 

Alex is sitting on the edge of Matt’s above ground pool with his pants rolled up to mid calf, his feet moving in lazy, intersecting circles in the dark water. The ripple of the inky pool, still lukewarm from the heat of the day, nearly drowns out Miles’s long drag off the cigarette, and then his words. 

“I know you mean well,” Miles says, leaning his elbows against the side of the pool, close to Alex but not quite touching. Alex keeps his eyes on the movement of his own lean feet, alabaster beneath the surface of the water. “It’s just a bit of a sore subject.”

Alex is silent for a long moment. “Why did you say ‘it won’t be like it was’? Why not?” 

Miles, too, has fixed his eyes on the slosh of Alex’s legs through the water. “I dunno. I just can’t imagine it’d be the same. I’m not the same, physically or otherwise. I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“Miles,” Alex sighs softly, looking over at his darkened profile. 

Miles just shakes his head. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

Alex shifts until he can fit a hand into his back pocket, and produces a scrap of junk mail addressed to Matt. It’s postcard sized, and bent unevenly in half. Miles takes it without meeting his eyes, and opens it with the cigarette still lodged safely between his first and second finger. 

_There is a spark of the divine in both your light and your shadow._

Miles lets out a quiet breath, his eyes flowing across the words more than once before reaching out deftly for Alex in the strengthening dark. He encircles Alex’s hips with one arm, pressing into his side. Alex lays his cheek against Miles’s head and pulls him closer, carefully balanced with his feet still in the water. 

“Give me time,” Miles murmurs, voice tight. “We have it now. For once.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still oscillating between post-concert depression and awe at the fact I actually saw the boys live. Fuck.  
> If you look through the #endless blue tag on my blog, you'll see that I visited some places pretty integral to this story, so go check it out if you're curious what they look like in real life!  
> Thanks for reading, as always!

The air conditioning in Miles’s car has broken—he suspects that the freon has been depleted, but hasn’t had the elusive confluence of time and energy needed to get it topped up. As it is now, the steady stream of hot hair blowing through the open windows does next to nothing to cool the car. Alex pulls his hair back into a bun at his nape to try to keep the weight of it off his neck, despite the fact that there is something distinctly idyllic about floating hair catching the afternoon light.

Miles had picked him up after his shift at Russell’s earlier in the afternoon, and Alex had been such a hurry to squeeze through the tight corridor into the staff room that he’d forgotten to leave his nametag in his locker before cantering out into the gravel parking lot. Arielle, the water plant expert, had waved to his back as he ducked out. He doesn’t realize the name tag is still pinned to his chest until they’re passing the back side of the “Historic Wayland” sign and leaving the town behind them. 

Now, they’re bouncing toward Newton’s Riverside T station, and a slow down on 95 leaves Alex trying to crawl out of his own skin from the combined heat of direct sunlight and car exhaust. Miles’s long fingers are fiddling with the radio; he seems unaffected by the heat. A pair of large, dark sunglasses rest above his stubble. Miles, in sickness or health, has never looked at all unkempt, and he’s not starting now. His black suit and dress shirt are perfectly immaculate, his pants flawlessly tapered to his thin legs. More than once, he catches Alex’s eyes on him, and raises an eyebrow that is neither hostile nor inviting. 

Past rush hour, the inbound train from Newton is barely half full on a weeknight. Miles has his conducting baton in a suave leather case and the scores for tonight’s pieces in a matching briefcase. Maybe he’s nervous—Alex is having a hard time reading him, these days, since so many of his old mannerisms have changed. Taking a risk, he lets his head fall against Miles’s shoulder as the train shudders down the tracks, as a sea of colonial houses and country clubs break through the greenery outside. 

By the time they step off at Brookline Hills, the sun is beginning to dip, and the night has begun to cool. Alex pulls at the still damp collar of his shirt, trying to spur some air flow. Miles, rather unexpectedly, reaches for his hand. He is nervous, then—finally, something Alex can comprehend. Alex sends him what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and Miles offers the edge of one back. He can’t quite recall the exact moment seeing a glimpse of the old Miles became his life’s pursuit, but now it’s practically old hat. 

“How do you think they’ll do?” Alex asks, letting their arms swing between where they’re linked. Miles’s two-toned oxfords click on the sidewalk as they stroll. 

“They’ll be fine,” Miles says. “They’ll hold it together.”

“Because you’re a good teacher,” Alex surmises, smiling beatifically. 

“Because I’m a good clinician,” replies Miles. “I’ve got just enough charisma to keep high schoolers’ attention for a two day program.”

“Well, if that’s what it takes.” Alex, in a bold move, steps in front of Miles and presses a warm hand against Miles’s sternum, spreading heavy fingers out over the crispness of his button up. Alex can’t help himself; the loveliness of the evening is beginning to compliment the loveliness of Miles. They’re practically nose to nose, now, in the middle of the sidewalk, and Alex has wound an arm around Miles’s waist. “It’s going to be superb, I’m sure.”

Miles’s expression visibly softens, and his eyes drift toward Alex’s mouth. For a moment, the only sound is the rhythmic click of a far off train and the warm wind rustling through the trees. Summer isn’t quite dead yet. 

“I don’t wanna be late,” Miles murmurs, eyes dark. He sidesteps Alex, but lets a lingering hand drag across the other man’s chest before breaking eye contact. And Alex is left scampering after him, inexplicably out of breath. 

 

 

While Miles conducts his last rehearsal before tonight’s concert with Norfolk county’s young prodigies, Alex wanders out into Brookline to find a florist and dinner, though not necessarily in that order. He buys a slice of pizza and eats it on a park bench, burying what might be loneliness in cheese and garlic-seasoned crust. 

As for the second part of his mission, he’s only partially successful—all the proper florists have closed, so he has to invade Stop and Shop for one of their flaccid, end-of-the-week bouquets. The white roses are the best of his emaciated options, and he pays for them with just enough time left to find his way back to Brookline High School. 

He doesn’t have the courage to try to locate Miles in the backstage sea of teenagers and expensive instruments, so he settles into an auditorium seat and demurely lays the flowers in his lap. Not for the first time, he gets a wave of deja vu—a flash of those evenings in Sayles Hall with the Brown orchestra, Miles contented and cheeky and radiant. 

It’s closer to reality, though, when the new Miles comes out on stage, and all the students rise to greet him silently as the audience applauds. Miles has always been different when he’s performing, but these days the contrast is sharper. Now, as he takes the podium, it’s like rewinding time. Miles flashes a toothy grin at the orchestra, then opens his score and retrieves his baton with an energy and flare Alex took for granted three years ago. Miles raises his hands, stands on his tiptoes; fifty bows find places on strings with an intoxicating synchronicity. Even though Alex can’t see his face with Miles’s back to the audience, he knows there’s a light in the other man’s eyes that, thankfully, hasn’t yet been extinguished.

This, Alex realizes, is what they lost each other over. This is what Miles couldn’t give up. 

According to the program, this is a Mendelssohn symphony. As Alex is as thick as a brick when it comes to classical music, it sounds as pleasant and unremarkable as just about anything else he’s ever heard that doesn’t have lyrics he can latch onto. Still, the texture of it washes over and surrounds him, and maybe it’s just Miles’s exuberance transferring to him through the soundwaves but, for a moment, he thinks he understands. 

Miles thrashes about on the podium until the last note, when he bends his knees and extends his arms out as far as they’ll go, lengthening the tone. Every eye in the orchestra is on him until, with a flick of his wrist, he cuts off the note itself and lets it ring in the heavy and suddenly empty air. Miles turns, bows, motions for the kids to follow suit. Alex is swallowing a lump in his throat that has arrived rather unexpectedly, but in truth was probably predictable. The ring in the air has been replaced with a wall of lauding, enthusiastic sound.

Miles’s eyes crinkle. He’s grinning. 

 

 

“Are you sure these aren’t a bit funereal?” Miles asks, eyeing the pale bouquet once they’re on the train home. He's teasing, though—a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. Everything about him is inviting: the sweat on his hairline, the smile in his eyes, the way he so shamelessly lets their legs and shoulders touch as they stand next to each other, grasping the bar above them for stability. 

“I just thought they were pretty,” Alex replies, without taking his eyes off Miles. This is Miles at his best, in his element—and it shows. For tonight, at least, he looks like himself. 

It’d taken him a while to get through the throng of parents and teachers extolling him in the wake of the performance. When he’d finally managed to fight his way over to Alex, it was like the world was put on hold for a moment—like suddenly, for a fraction of second, their thoughts were on the same wavelength, and they’d spun out of control and into each other. They’d kissed unabashedly, Alex’s hands sliding over Miles’s stubble, eyes shut tight. They couldn’t have been linked for very long, but there were lifetimes in the way he could feel every shallow breath Miles took. 

Now, as they sway slightly with the motion of the train, they can’t take their eyes off each other. Miles moves his hand on the bar above their heads so that they stand even closer together, the heat evident despite the space that remains between them. Finally, when another batch of people trickles off and the only remaining passenger besides themselves is a man buried in his phone, Alex closes his eyes and the last centimeter between them. The last few stops before the terminal are a blur of tongues and teeth and grasping hands; Alex only comes to when the automated voice over the speaker announces the end of the line. For a moment, all they can do is stare at each other, breaths rebounding off each other’s lips. 

“I told Matt I’d be back around ten,” Alex says, eyes darting toward the floor self-consciously. 

“You don’t have to—” Miles pauses, licking his lips. “You can stay at mine, if you like.”

Alex thinks he might know what Miles is offering, but is almost too afraid to get his hopes up. “Okay.”

 

 

Back in Cochituate, Miles’s house is dark, until one of them throws out a haphazard hand to slap at the lightswitch. Alex perceives the change in light from behind his eyelids. Before long, Miles has him pressed against the wall in the short hallway between the bedroom and the living room. If he were thinking at all, he’d be marvelling at how the spark between them doesn’t seem to have faded at all. Instead, his thoughts have devolved into desperate, lustful fragments. It’s been too long. 

Before they go any farther, though, his hand catches on the bedroom doorframe and stalls them just long enough for their lips to break apart a fraction of an inch and their eyes to open. 

“Miles?” he asks, because it seems like the thing to do. 

It does the trick—Miles’s eyes clear for a moment, like he’s just woken up. His hands still cup his Alex’s face, but his gaze performs a superficial roam over Alex’s features. He’s not really looking; he’s thinking. Assessing the risk and reward balance. Consequence versus instinct. Alex waits, lips parted, breath lodged in his throat. 

Finally, Miles’s expression seems to soften. He blinks slowly, and nods—barely perceptible, at first, then with increasing vigor. Alex smiles softly, and kisses him again, letting himself be pushed backward toward the bed.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as some of you may have heard on tumblr this week, the wattpad user glassinthepark plagiarized all of Spin and it looks like she was planning on copying Endless Blue also. I've reported her and the story, but if any of y'all wanna report her also over there, I'd be very grateful <3  
> Thanks for reading!

_Your love is something soft and sourceless; the bread without the bakery, the middle without the end._

Alex has woken first; he disentangles himself from Miles to reach for the notebook on the nightstand and jot down the sentence that had swirled through his head in the strange, half-formed moments between sleep and consciousness. The moment where he was both his purest self and his barest. Miles stirs a little, but doesn’t wake when Alex slips from the sheets and leaves the note behind. 

Outside, the world is still raw and new, the morning sky still tinted orange. He sits down heavily in the grass, and dew begins to soak through the tattered joggers he’s thrown on. He lays his hands out before him, digs the tips of his fingers into the moist earth. 

“You just can’t keep your hands out of the dirt, can you?”

Miles has slipped into shorts and Stone Roses shirt. He’s smiling fondly, and Alex finds himself smiling back on an instinct tinged with relief. The possibility had certainly existed in his mind that Miles’s post performance buzz would wear off and he’d wake up full of regret. This, though, does not seem to be the case—he looks charming in post-coital dishevelment, and happily smug about it, too. 

“What can I say,” Alex replies, smirking. “I’m a real mountain man.”

Miles trots forth from where he’d been leaning against the sliding door and settles down on the grass, resting his chin on Alex’s shoulder and winding long arms around his torso. Alex leans into the embrace for a few soft moments, until the idleness of his hands begins to bother him, and he reaches again for the earth. Miles’s lips brush against his neck as he begins to weave blades of grass into chain in the same way he’d seen Josh Homme do it a few months ago. Already, the beginning of the summer feels like eons back in time. The directionless feeling he’d returned Stateside with hasn’t quite dissipated, but Miles has been a welcome distraction. Notably, Homme had called a week back, going on about a job opening at the University of Maryland, and Alex hadn’t the faintest idea what to do or say. He hasn’t mentioned the conversation to Miles—Homme is a sore subject he still doesn’t care to broach—and at the time had rattled off something about not liking the distance from the College Park metro stop to the university itself. He’d hung up before Josh could be properly perplexed by such a banal complaint. 

“What do you have on today?” Alex asks, letting his grass chain drift away on the breeze. 

Miles lifts his head slightly to respond, nose brushing against the nape of Alex’s neck. “Going into the city for a doctor’s appointment.”

“Do you want me to come?” Alex asks, unsure of what exactly he wants the answer to be. 

There’s a pause. He’s almost glad he can’t see Miles’s face. After a moment, his tone is quiet and measured: “I’d rather you not.”

“Alright.” He tries not to sound offended, because he’s not even sure he is. Miles’s stubble brushes over his skin again; a palliative. He relaxes against Miles, links their hands where they lay against his thigh. Living in the moment is something he certainly hadn’t mastered three years ago, but he’s getting closer to it now. There’s something to be said for having nearly no professional prospects whatsoever. It’s almost soothing. 

 

 

Miles leaves for Boston by noon, and so Alex trudges through a few front yards over to Matt’s to kill some time. It’s his day off at Russell’s, and lately he’s not been doing well with free time. He finds the Helderses in the backyard—Breana sunbathing on the patio, eating a sandwich that seems to be mostly late summer tomatoes, and Matt in the pool, holding Amelia to his chest while she gurgles delightedly at the water. 

“Hey, I was just about to call you,” Matt says, flashing him a grin as he hoists Amy up so that just her feet kick the water into a white froth. She squeals with happiness. “I’ve been poking around at Wellesley, and I think there’s something for you, if you want it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you should apply. I think it’d be a good fit.” Matt smirks. “If you’re willing to give up the luxury and prestige of Russell’s, of course.”

Alex gives a weak smile. Even Wellesley, which wouldn’t require a move, seems exhausting. Academia, these days, mostly just makes him feel like he wants to lie down. Before India, he’d never quite pictured himself settling into a professorship or adjuncting anywhere, even if it is the expected path. He’d figured, on some level, that a few years abroad would get the wanderlust out of him. All he knows, now, is that he’s not quite content with puttering about at Russell’s, and that the alternative, a real job, is quietly terrifying. 

He says, “I’ll put together my résumé.”

“Fuck yeah,” says Matt, before blowing a raspberry against Amy’s belly button. “Make sure you shower or something before the interview. And don’t wear your yellow suit.”

“I _do_ shower.” Alex frowns. “This is just the way me hair is.”

Matt squints at him skeptically, while Breana snorts. “Okay.”

“Are you staying for dinner?” Breana asks, laying down a copy of _The New Yorker_ and rising, slightly, from her reclined chair. 

“Nah, Miles’ll be back soon.”

“I’m glad you guys are working it out,” Matt says. “We all thought you were fucking mental, breaking it off the way you did.”

Alex’s face contorts. “Oi, thanks, mate.”

Matt shrugs, and raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “It’s the truth, love.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you guys are working it out also,” Breana says, sending Matt a reproachful look beneath the brim of her sunhat. 

“Yeah,” Alex replies quietly. “Me too.”

He ends up lingering with them longer than he intends, joining Matt in the pool after a while and then helping prep for dinner, even though he hadn’t planned to stay. Periodically, he glances down the way, but doesn’t see Miles’s Fiat pull into his drive until long after he expects it to. Even then, it’s like something is repulsing him—despite the idyllic morning, there’s something hanging over him the moment Miles returns home, something that keeps him wandering around Matt’s house in cowardice for far longer than he should. 

It’s sunset by the time he bids goodbye to the Helderses and hikes back toward Miles’s red door. He takes Karl Marx out of his breast pocket and lets the snake curl around his ear for reassurance. A tiny tongue darts out to taste the sweat at Alex’s temple happily. 

The door is unlocked; he lets himself in without bothering to knock. In the living room, Miles is sprawled on the loveseat, a tumbler full of amber liquid in the hand laid limply over the armrest. A football match is on the telly, the volume up just a tad too high for comfort in the half dark room. Miles looks up when he enters, and Alex can immediately tell that there’s something off about him. 

“That took a while,” Alex remarks, trying for casual.

Miles gives an affirmative grunt, and goes for another swig of his drink. He’s upset, but not in any way terribly tangible—he’s not been crying, or anything so garrish. It’s something about the hunch of his shoulders, the creases around his mouth. It’s subtle, but at this point there’s very little physical ambiguity between them. 

“Are you alright?” Alex asks. 

“M’fine,” is Miles’s murmured reply. “Just got caught in some bad traffic on the way back. Tired me out.”

Alex settles onto the couch beside him, expects him to shy away from his touch. Instead, Miles leans toward him immediately, pressing his face into Alex’s collarbone and reaching for him blindly. Alex winds his arms around the other man, lays his cheek against the top of Miles’s prickly head. He says, “You’d tell if you weren’t alright, yeah?”

Against the skin of his neck, he feels Miles hum out a response. It’s not quite a _yes._


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a little end-of-the-era oneshot last week called _All Things_ if anyone's interested and hasn't seen it yet!  
>  As per usual, thanks for reading <3

“No snakes in bed,” Miles reprimands, but there’s no conviction behind it. There’s a fondness in his eyes as he looks back over his shoulder. He’s peeling off his jeans and beginning work on the buttons of one of his many Hawaiian shirts. 

Alex is already undressed and beneath the sheets, with Karl Marx stretched leisurely out on the pillow beside him. The snake is sleepy and full from his evening meal of a single cricket. He coils lazily around the finger Alex offers to transport him to the leafy bed made up for him in a mason jar on the bedside table. 

“Can I borrow a suit some time in the next few weeks?” Alex asks, just as Miles pops the clasp on his elegant silver watch. 

Miles shrugs. “Sure. Don’t you have one, though?”

“Can’t wear me mustard pants to an interview, apparently.”

“Shame. I like how those fit.” Miles catches his eye just as he pulls the wife beater over his head and exposes bare chest. Alex raises a salacious eyebrow in response. 

“Oh, really? I thought they were a bit tight on the bum.”

Miles slips into the sheets beside him, the pendant still around his neck catching the light of the side lamp. Alex recognizes it, of course - a Christmas present from a different world. Alex still remembers seeing it in one of the Providence Place department stores and knowing its ultimate purpose in this universe with a sureness he’d never quite been able to direct towards his own life. The pendant has found its place, securely around Miles’s neck. Alex likes to think he’s getting warmer. 

“The trousers _are_ a bit tight on the bum,” Miles replies, the edge of a grin tugging at the ragged line of his upper lip. He reaches across the sheets and squeezes Alex’s butt for emphasis. In a mockingly conspiratorial whisper, he adds, “But I think you’re getting away with it, la.”

Suddenly, there’s no space between them, and Miles’s fingers are in hi hair and between his thighs. And the cold metal of the pendant is pressing against Alex’s chest, too. 

 

 

Taylor comes over for dinner on Tuesday evening to celebrate her Juilliard admittance. She stays, afterwards, to watch the first Pats game of the season, even though she’s a fan of one of the southern teams and Alex still doesn’t understand the rules of American football anyway. He’s had a phone interview with Wellesley earlier in the afternoon, and is feeling soft and lucid in the aftermath. In general, he finds all phone conversations to be harrowing, but rather than compounding it, the separate stresses of both an interview _and_ a phone conversation seem to cancel each other out. Now, lying with his head on Miles’s left thigh and the Scouser’s long fingers in his hair, he’s sure that he’s never been more articulate and professional than he was on the phone this afternoon with the upper echelons of Wellesley’s anthropology department and HR. 

At some point in the evening, an unperturbed Taylor asks, “Is there supposed to be a snake crawling up your neck, Alex?”

“That’s just Karl,” Alex replies, feeling the steady glide of sinewy snake muscle work its way toward his nest of dark hair. “He’s a communist,” he adds, as though it’s some sort of explanation. 

“Miles mentioned you spent some time in India?” The way she says it, combined with the nonchalant toss of hair over her shoulder, seems to suggest that Miles has mentioned considerably more than that. It reinforces what Alex has already assumed - that Miles and Taylor are friends as much as they are student and teacher. And that Alex’s presence may still be a subject of some controversy among those who only know pieces of the story. 

“Northern India and Pakistan for a while, and then I got a bit restless and wandered.” He aims to match her level of nonchalance blow for blow, all the while with a peripheral eye on Miles’s reaction. Miles is affecting indifference, eyes on the game as he brings a gin and tonic up to his lips smoothly. “But I’m back now. For good, I think.”

“He’s had himself an interview with Wellesley today, actually,” Miles chimes in, and there’s something like a note of pride in his voice. 

“Well, only a phone one,” Alex says, but smiles nonetheless. Taylor’s concern seems to lessen, if marginally. Though initially put off by her suspicion, as the evening wanes on its source begins to dawn on him. He watches her squeeze Miles’s shoulder on the way out in some mix of sympathy and pity and knows, immediately, that they share the same goal. No one wants to see Miles get hurt again. Though Miles was never quite the victim in Alex’s narrative of their split, there’s still a keen knot guilt somewhere in the pit of his stomach that keeps him on his toes when he’s feeling a little too content. 

The high of the interview has worn off by the time he helps Miles sweep up the kitchen. He pours himself a nightcap but doesn’t end up finishing it before the liquor begins to feel too much like a crutch. Miles throws back a handful of evening pills that have entered his routine in the last few weeks and then runs a hand through hair that isn’t long enough to muss. Alex comes over, after a moment, and kisses him with the alcohol still trickling down his throat. Happily, these days actions are again allowed to speak louder than words. Miles affirms this by slipping his arms around Alex and not letting go. 

 

 

His intuition regarding the success of his phone interview proves correct, and within the week he gets a call inviting him in for a face-to-face meeting. The call comes into his mobile during his morning shift break at Russell’s, while he’s taking a moment to stare at the long line of weathered Subarus parked in the gravel lot. After he’s hung up, it occurs to him that getting a real job will require him to extricate himself from this one. It’ll be a bit of a loss - both he and Karl Marx have enjoyed the freedom the greenhouses offer, and his resignation will likely involve meeting with the upper tier of Russell’s management, every member of which has the last name Russell and a vaguely cult-like loyalty to every stray pebble and petal in the complex. 

He takes a moment to remind himself that he has not yet received an offer of any sort, and may yet be allowed to live out the rest of his life being paid by the hour behind the cash register, struggling to make his accent understood to every New Englander wandering through. As long as he has Miles to return to in the evening, it all seems oddly bearable. 

Most of what little he has has officially migrated over to Miles’s house, and slowly Matt has been making it more and more and difficult for Alex to take his car whenever he pleases. Soon, he’ll have to invest in his own, and it’s with this thought that Alex realizes he’s settling in. That the feeling of transience and instability is beginning to subside. There’s something surreal in returning to a warm living room with Miles waiting for him, even after all this time and distance and heartbreak. The universe, finally, has righted itself. 

He wonders if it’ll last.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was difficult.

Miles spends the last few days of the week with a cold, just as the last of the summer heat dissipates. The lush verdancy of the trees is beginning to thin; the sky has an extended period of dark grey in the mornings and the evenings. Miles sniffles his way through Thursday and spends Friday with his face in the couch cushions, cancelling all his private lessons and delegating what rehearsals he can to assistants. Alex makes him tea, laughs at the state of his hair, herds him to bed when it’s midnight and Miles has fallen asleep with his mouth agape on the arm of the settee. 

Miles murmurs a thank you just as he crashes into bed; he’s already unconscious again by the time Alex kisses him on the top of the head. 

The night, as seen through the three small windows spaced evenly just below the ceiling joint, seems especially dark in contrast to the warmth of the side lamp. The house creaks, slightly, with the sort of noises perceived only for the forgotten hours—the groan of the washing machine down the hall, the languid whir of a high altitude breeze through the tops of the trees. Alex, sitting on the edge of his side of the bed, reaches for the novel on the bedside table to add the swish of a turning page to the symphony. He has to prod a paper crane out of the way to reach it. 

Before he’s read a single word, though, he’s tearing one of the blank pages out of the back of the book and scribbling on it in slanting capital letters. 

_I lose myself in you but it’s not like being lost at all._

Miles doesn’t stir when Alex slips under the covers beside him. 

 

 

Matt has decided to throw a Sunday night football party, because it’s “what Americans do.” He claims, though, that’ll he put an English twist on it—the twist, as it turns out, is just considerably more alcohol than is necessary or advisable. Nick and Kelly come in from Rhode Island to join in on the debauchery, and with kids stowed away in the hands of relatives and friends, the Little Yorkshire of old flourishes under the influence of microbrew and grocery store wine. 

Though Miles still looks like a trainwreck, he sniffles his way into a t-shirt and trudges through the cooling night air with Alex’s arm around his waist. A few drinks in and he starts to brighten up—color in his cheeks, the lilt back in his voice as he talks to Kelly about Mendelssohn symphonies. She’s nodding politely, maybe because she actually has any idea what he’s talking about and maybe because it’s just nice to see Miles excited about something these days. There was a time, Alex can’t help but recall, when Miles could not keep his mouth shut for longer than ten seconds without bubbling with excitement over something banal. He shoves the memory deep down somewhere and smothers it with another gin and tonic. 

Tom Brady appears on screen and Matt shouts, to the amusement of the entire room, “Catch those squishy balls!” 

“I don’t fucking understand this game,” Alex says, squinting at the instant replay. 

“They catch the ball and run,” Miles replies, gesturing toward the screen with his drink. “It’s not that complicated.”

“Maybe if you have another drink everything will be illuminated,” says Nick, face splitting into a grin as he sends another beer in Alex’s direction.

“Do you ever feel like drinking is our only hobby?” Breana asks, the fluorescence of the TV screen reflecting off her pupils. 

“And sports,” says Miles, pointing at Tom Brady. “Squishy balls.”

Alex starts laughing and soon finds that he can’t stop. Miles leans into his side as the night progresses, and Alex relishes the warmth of the touch. At some point, the game ends, but the TV stays on, blaring post-game nonsense into the room while the inhabitants slowly pass into unconsciousness. Alex’s eyes are fluttering, too, until he feels a tug on his arm and looks down to find Miles shifting to face him, eyes wide. 

“I need to tell you something.” Miles’s voice is a lilting whisper; he’s drunk. 

“What is it?” Alex slurs, trying to arch an eyebrow but not succeeding. Miles’s body is halfway sprawled over his on the couch; Alex can feel the other man’s heartbeat against his own ribcage. For a long moment, Miles just stares him, moving his lips like he’s waiting for the words to gather of their own accord. Alex feels himself begin to fade off again before they do. The last thing he perceives before sleep overtakes him is Miles’s hand, slipping into his. 

 

 

In the morning, they drag themselves back to Miles’s so that Alex can recuperate before his afternoon shift at Russell’s. Miles resumes his pose from the last few days—face down on the couch, smothered by blanket. He’s asleep when Alex kisses him on the head and leaves for work. 

He spends the afternoon and evening intermittently chatting with Arielle about nitrogen fixation and fertilizers. When he tells her that his dirt obsession extends to an actual graduate degree wherein he’s expected to be knee deep in ancient mud, she looks visibly taken aback. 

“My god, you have a PhD?” she asks. “What are you doing _here_?”

He’s ashamed to say the questions gives him pause. After a moment, though, he slips on a sly smile and shrugs. “What’s anybody doing anywhere?”

He makes a specific point of not thinking about her question on the way back to Cochituate and Miles. Back home, Miles is sitting up, but not looking hardly any more awake. Alex places a hand against his head and finds it warmer than seems healthy; Miles gives a dry cough and avoids Alex’s gaze. 

“You don’t seem to be feeling any better,” Alex says quietly. 

“No shit.”

Alex takes a heavy seat in the armchair across from him. Somewhere in his mind, he gets just the barest wisp of Miles words from last night, just before they’d faded into unconsciousness on Matt’s couch. “You’re not telling me something,” he decides. 

Miles rubs at his forehead, mouth turned down in a volatile frown. “I’m not telling you several things.”

“Why?” It comes out firmer than he expects; the tremor he’d thought was in his throat is actually in his hands, now. 

Miles shakes his head, and for a moment Alex gets a glimpse of understanding—sometimes words are too concrete. To speak them aloud only roots them more solidly in truth. Miles is afraid to let whatever this is out into the world, and at such a thought Alex begins to feel himself go numb. 

“You know what an opportunistic infection is,” Miles says softly, eyes on the upholstery. The next words come out crooked; he’s searching for the right terms. “Doctor says the antiretrovirals aren’t working. They never have—any of the ones we’ve tried. My white blood cell count is still too low. It was only a matter of time before I caught something.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Miles rises unsteadily to his feet, wrapping the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He reaches for his cigarettes, but stops when another cough racks his frame. “I think you do.”

Alex is frozen in place; he watches Miles turn and pad silently toward the bedroom and can’t even manage to blink. Some time later he finds himself in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to construct his face into something stoic. The words are still twisting in his mind—he’s known what they meant all along, of course. If the ARTs aren’t working, then Miles’s CD4 count is too low all the time, which means he’s more prone to infection. And once an HIV patient gets an opportunistic infection, he’s no longer an HIV patient. 

He’s an AIDS patient. 

Alex unlatches the white knuckle grip he has on the counter and reaches for his phone. He knows, already, what the answer will be long before he types in his question, but writing it out keeps him occupied for a few moments. _Progression to AIDS. Mortality rates. Survival time._

He stops reading when the nausea sets in. Across the hall, he hears Miles shift in bed, a far away sound. Alex slips down onto the cold tile of the floor, curling himself around his knees and trying to regulate his breathing before he chokes. The fluorescent bulb above him is blinding—he covers his eyes with his palms, pressing hard into his sockets until the outside world begins to fade, until he can’t think.


	16. Chapter 16

Miles wakes before the sun, unable to take a deep breath and coughing desperately between every inhalation. Alex has finally pulled himself up off the bathroom floor and into bed beside him, but he’s still awake and staring at the ceiling when Miles gasps into consciousness. 

Alex is already shrugging into pants and a jacket by the time Miles wheezes, “I think I need help.”

“Yep,” Alex says, and helps him into clothes with a level of calm that seems to surprise both of them. Enough of a surprise, maybe, to keep Miles from passing out due to hypoxia. Miles decides he can walk, and so they settle on driving to the hospital rather than calling an ambulance. Dawn light is just beginning to break over the horizon by the time they arrive and, if Alex wasn’t properly numb to begin with, the bright activity of the emergency room reduces him to something unfeeling and nonexistent. 

The nurse checking them in asks for pre-existing conditions; _AIDS_ rolls of Miles’s tongue so fast he must have practiced, at some point. He doesn’t even blink. Alex has to fight to keep his knees from buckling. 

The ER doctor on duty is a massive Australian bloke called Avery, and despite the hour he seems to be in good spirits right up until he reads the nurse’s notes. “It looks like PCP, but you need a chest x-ray,” he says, with the expression of someone acutely uncomfortable and trying desperately hard not to look like it. 

“PCP?” asks Alex, arms crossed over his chest. He’s not sat down since Miles has been admitted, preferring to pace the floor to the left of Miles’s bed. 

“Pneumocystis pneumonia,” Dr. Avery replies. “Pretty common opportunistic infection for AIDS patients.”

“Oh,” says Alex softly, finding himself in a chair a moment later without any memory of how he got there. 

They’ve already drugged Miles with something that has him breathing better, even if he still has the ragged look of someone on the edge of gasping for air. The nurse had had to wrestle the inhaler out of his hands when they’d arrived, finally convincing him that this time it wouldn’t help. Miles and oxygen have always had something of a tenuous relationship. 

Avery orders someone to hook Miles up to IV antibiotics for the PCP and corticosteroids for his breathing. By the time his oxygen levels come up, he’s fallen into weary sleep. The nurse looks to Alex, where he’s deflated into the chair by the side of the bed. 

“He should be ready to go home by tomorrow, if he keeps improving,” she says, voice soft. Alex is sure he must look rather pathetic—not just from her tone, but from the scratch of patchy stubble on his chin and the wrinkles in the button-up he’d snatched from the floor before they’d left for the hospital. The exhaustion in his bones has seeped into the creases around his eyes, weighing him down with every blink. He murmurs his gratitude as she trots out, and reaches for his phone while he still has the energy. 

He calls Matt first, tells him what’s happened and why, his tone so quietly dispassionate that Matt seems taken aback. It must be something about the early morning; it’s drained all the anger and fear out of Alex, leaving only despondency in its place. Matt says he’ll come over as soon as he drops off Amelia at daycare, and then Alex is muttering a thank you and hanging up before Matt can ask if he’s okay. 

Arielle is next, because he’s supposed to have a shift at Russell’s this afternoon. She promises to cover for him, doesn’t ask the nature of the “medical emergency” that has drawn him off from his botanical duties. Only once he signs off with her does he take a deep breath and lean back, again, in his chair. Outside the window above his head, morning has broken in full, casting a slanting ray of light into his lap. He scoots his chair out of the path of the sun and closer to Miles, reaching out to take the hand not impaled by the IV and laying his head down beside their linked fingers. Even as he begins to nod off, the thought lurks in the back of his mind—the thought that this is only the first of many sterile, white rooms to come. 

 

 

He awakes by midday to find that Matt has arrived, and settled in on the other side of the room without waking him or Miles. Alex rises, tightly, from his hunched position, glances over to make sure Miles is still breathing, and then motions for Matt to follow him into the hallway. 

“So it’s bad?” Matt says, pressing a pack of cigarettes and a lukewarm coffee cup into Alex’s hands.

Alex gives a grim nod, eyes on the floor while he tries to roll the knot out of his neck. “He’s got pneumonia. Because of the...um—”

“Yeah,” Matt says quickly, knowingly. There’s something about saying it out loud. “How are you holding up, then?”

Alex has to focus his gaze on an indeterminant spot over Matt’s shoulder for a long moment before looking him in the eyes. The only thing in Matt’s expression that gives away his mental state is the way half his bottom is caught between his teeth. This is likely on purpose—he’s staying pointedly blank, for now, in order to evaluate Alex first. 

“I dunno,” Alex breathes out finally, running a hand through his hair before folding his arms tight across his chest. “I really don’t have any fucking idea right now.”

Before he knows it, he’s being folded into a hug, and it’s like last night all over again in the fluorescence of Miles’s bathroom—fighting to stay upright and blink the shock out of his eyes. Matt, though, is holding him up now, in the way he always sort of has. 

 

 

Matt is still there when Miles wakes in the evening. Alex has spent the afternoon with his legs folded into the chair with him so that he can rest a massive, well worn copy of the _Mahabharata_ on one knee. He’d asked Breana to bring it by at lunch—it’s always good for the times when ancient India feels more like home than New England. 

Miles still looks haggard, even though his hands and breaths are steadier. The silence between the three of them is notably tense; there’s an expectation in the air. Finally, Miles finishes the last of his bland meal and starts to speak. 

“I should’ve said something earlier. Soz,” he mutters. “I just didn’t know what good it’d do.”

He’s not terribly sorry, and Alex isn’t terribly angry. At least, now, the situation is elucidated. Alex is just relieved to finally feel like he has all the pieces fit together correctly. Miles stumbles through an explanation of a virus that, in his case, mutates to resist every antiretroviral they throw at it, until inevitably it makes him so vulnerable he can’t fight off any other infection either. It’s rare—he’s unlucky. Impressively so. 

“This shouldn’t be happening, in this day and age,” Matt says, shaking his head. His mouth is twisted in a mix of disgust and disbelief. “I don’t fucking understand.”

Nobody seems to know what to say to that; it’s possible there’s nothing that can be said. Alex has been known to put a lot of faith in words, but lately they seem to be failing him more and more often. 

Once again, Alex links his hand with Miles and lays his head down on the bed. Miles slips his other hand into Alex’s hair, kneading his fingers in a gentle rhythm. Not for the first time, it’s unclear who’s doing the comforting. 

 

 

In the morning, Miles is well enough to be discharged. Dr. Avery writes him a prescription for an antibiotic to add to the cocktail of pills he already doses himself with each morning, a ritual that these days seems to be more in vain than ever before. Miles slips on the rumpled clothes he’d come in with the day before and they venture back into the known universe outside. The day is gray and cool; autumn in its truest form. Alex passes his jacket to Miles without a word. 

In the car, Miles says, “You have your Wellesley interview this week, don’t you?”

Alex can’t possibly imagine doing anything even remotely normal or forward-thinking over the next few days, but he nods. “Yeah. Fuck.”

Miles lets out a breath. “Good. It’ll take your mind off things for a mo’.”

“Maybe.”

It’s true, though—they have to keep the facsimile of normalcy now, regardless of the future. He has to keep living. For both of their sakes.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait on this one!

He comes very close to wearing the yellow suit, despite the advice otherwise. Instead, he settles on flares and a white jacket, which is almost worse. Miles is still asleep when he leaves, and though he’d promised Matt he’d check in before heading to the interview, he forgoes the visit in favor of proceeding straight to Wellesley. He stops only for coffee on the way, despite the fact that he’s already slugged down two cups at home. By the time he arrives at the college, his left leg is bouncing with a distracting kinetic energy and the shape he’d tried to comb his hair into has dissolved beneath restless hands.

It goes poorly from the beginning. 

The panel is three women and two men, all dressed in neutral, professional combinations of jackets and slacks. He forgets all of their names immediately. Alex has broken out in a caffeine sweat while waiting in the reception area and now has a sheen across his brow line that compliments what remains of the product in his hair. Between pleasantries, he picks at a scab on his left knuckle and avoids eye contact. 

They compliment his Ivy League degree, and the devotion to the study he’d once thought of as his defining characteristic. The first question of substance is in regard to his time in Asia, and he muddles out a five-minute-long sentence in response, tripping over words as he goes. The confused silence afterward rings deafening in his ears. 

The woman at the center of the table recovers first. “Right, so...how do you feel you would be an asset to the Wellesley community?”

He swallows painfully and wishes Karl Marx were in his breast pocket, even as he silently acknowledges that a sudden snake appearance might be the only thing that could make this worse. He gestures toward a wilting rose bush out the window to their left. “I’m a good gardener.”

“What?”

“Oh, you mean, like, academically.” He gives an awkward, slightly unhinged laugh. “I thought you just meant as a person in general.”

He laughs again, and it’s with genuine mirth, even if no one else seems to appreciate the humor. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pot of coffee behind the front desk, would you? I wouldn’t mind having some on the way out.”

There is no coffee to be had, and it’s not long before he’s dismissed with a few dismal handshakes and stilted goodbyes. Helders is going to skin him for this, and he deserves it—for throwing away the opportunity and sullying Matt’s recommendation in the process. He’s barely out of the building before he’s lighting up a cigarette, just to keep his hands from shaking. On the way home, he buys himself a donut and eats it in three bites. There’s something wrong with him; it’s not just the caffeine, not just the adrenaline of flaming out so fantastically in the interview. It’s not until he’s sitting in Miles’s driveway that he figures it out. The trauma of the last week hits him like a freight train—Miles sick, getting sicker. It already has a vice-like grasp on everything he does, on every thought that passes through his mind. He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles go white, so he isn’t carried off into the overcast sky. 

Inside, Matt is waiting for him. 

Miles is shuffling around the kitchen, making tea, and Helders is on the settee flipping through an _NME_. “How’d it go, then?” he asks, cracking a crooked smile. Miles, in the adjacent room, stops what he’s doing and raises an eyebrow. 

Alex lets out a long breath. “I’m sorry.”

Matt seems to take in Alex’s current state—what he’s wearing, the twitch of his fingers, the hair falling into his eyes—and sighs. Miles drifts in, Karl Marx in the palm of his hand. Alex trades him his Dunkin Donuts receipt for the snake. Alex coos happily at Karl while Miles unfolds the glossy paper. 

_Too often it seems like the line of your nose and the skin at the nape of your neck are the only things keeping me afloat._

Miles’s lips curl into a smile. “So, you’ll still be at the garden center for the foreseeable future, then?”

Alex can’t keep the relief out of his voice. “Looks like it.”

 

 

 

In some ways, life in Providence was a ripeness before decay—a moment where they’d both reached personal and professional heights, arrived at the precipice of success. Was it the breakup, then, that had put them over the edge? Begun the descent? And if that’s true, then isn’t it Alex’s fault for leaving? 

These are early morning thoughts. 

Beside him, Miles is asleep on his side, the quilt pulled up to his nose. There are dark circles under his eyes, even when rested. He’s breathing better, though—there’s less of a harrowing, wet rattle with each intake of breath than there was last week. If Alex doesn’t think beyond the next twenty-four hours of his life, then he’s comforted by this fact. Unfortunately for him, three in the morning is not a time conducive to short-sightedness. It’s a time when the world condenses into a knot in the pit of his stomach that weighs an immeasurable amount. 

He latches on to the slow gurgle of the dishwasher in the kitchen, takes a steadying breath with a hand over his mouth. Miles, though, is not as deeply asleep as he seems. He stirs into consciousness a moment later, and fixes Alex with a stare still muddled by sleep. 

“What’s wrong?” Miles mumbles, disentangling his mouth from the bedding. 

Alex has his eyes shut tight, one hand still covering the lower half of his face, as though it’s the only thing keeping it all inside. When he just gives a stiff shake of his head, Miles pulls himself into a more upright position and reaches for the lamp. “Alex, are you alright?”

“Jesus. I’m so sorry.” The words come out thick, catching in his throat more than once. “This is my fault.”

“What is?”

“All of it. Fuck.”

“No, it’s not,” Miles says firmly, and pulls him in until Alex’s face rests against his collarbone. “It’s not.”

Alex still hasn’t opened his eyes, even though they’re now firmly pressed against the fabric of Miles’s t-shirt. Now is not the time to let himself go; he doesn’t deserve it. Miles’s hand moves in a comforting rhythm across his back, and for a moment the only sound is the slide of his fingers over Alex’s skin. 

“And, not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s not actually all about you,” Miles adds, and it’s a bit of a tease—Alex can feel Miles’s smile against his hair. He almost laughs. 

Finally, Alex pulls away, wiping briskly at his face until he can direct his ragged eyes at the tangle of bedsheets illuminated by the pool of sepia light. He scratches at the back of his head. “We fucked this all up, didn’t we?” he says, motioning broadly—at the room, the sheets, them, everything in between. 

Miles bites at his thumbnail. “Yeah, we did. A bit.”

Alex twists to face the window, expecting to find a soothing wall of night, but sees only the two of them reflected in the glass.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the world's gone to shit but here you go

With his hands buried solidly in the cool dirt, it is easy to believe he lives in a different world than he does. 

Earlier in the season, he’d planted a few promising cold-weather vegetables, and the first batch has now come to maturity under his gentle care. He’s not sure whether he wants to eat them or just leave them on the windowsill to admire. 

It’s a rare sunny day—perhaps the last of the season, judging by the cold wind ruffling the treetops and the hair on his neck. A wind chime dangling from the gutter gives off a few echoing, forlorn notes, accompanying the sound of Miles practicing Janáček inside for the local symphony’s performance tomorrow night. The cello’s revival is always a good sign; Miles hardly ever plays if his spirits aren’t at least somewhat buoyant. 

Eventually the sound tapers off, and Miles trots out to join him. He sits down beside where Alex is hunched over the Earth, but keeps his chin pointed up, his eyes on the sky. Alex looks over every few moments to watch the bob of his Adam’s apple highlighted against a backdrop of fall vegetation. 

“Sounded good,” Alex says after a while, motioning vaguely with one dirt-encrusted hand toward the house and the cello inside it. 

Miles smirks. “Fuck off. ‘Course it did.”

Alex laughs, and for a moment he wonders if he’ll ever be able to stop. He’s still smiling broadly, and still a little bit hysterical, when Miles lays one hand on the back of his neck to pull him into a kiss. 

“I invited Matt and them to your concert,” Alex says, after they’ve pulled away. He’s still blushing, the blood still pounding in his ears. “I think everyone needs a pick-me-up, or summat.”

“I’m not even first chair anymore, though,” Miles replies, embarrassment twinging his tone. “I missed too many rehearsals.”

Alex’s immediate response is to wonder _who on Earth cares?_ But before the question makes it to his lips, he answers it himself—Miles does. He always has. Music has always been, in his mind, what sets him apart. What justifies his existence. And his competitive streak has never allowed him to be second best at something so inextricably tied to his sense of self.

“You’ll still be playing, though,” says Alex. “The music is still yours.”

“Yeah,” Miles murmurs, unconvinced. His eyes are no longer on the sky. 

Alex reaches out to run a hand through Miles’s short crop of hair. He grins mischievously. “We’ll boo the first chair cellist, if you want. Tell him to piss off.”

Miles sighs dramatically and sends him a wry smile. “You’d do that for me?”

“Anything for you, Mr. Kane.”

And then they’re giggling at each other, drowning out the toll of the wind chimes and the swish of the breeze through the trees. 

 

 

 

 

In the backseat of Matt’s Prius, Amy and Alex are having a staring contest, interrupted periodically by Amelia’s laughter or sudden interest in eating her own fingers. Alex says, “I’m definitely winning.”

Matt snorts. “Congratulations.”

Breana points suddenly ahead of them. “There’s one.”

There’s a squeal of rubber as Matt slings them into the last open parking spot, without taking his foot off the gas until the very last moment. He grins back at them as he shuts off the engine. Alex collects the bouquet of chrysanthemums he’s decided on for the occasion and slips out onto the pavement just as Breana comes around to unbuckle Amelia. 

Alex is wearing a teal blue suit today, harvested from the Monday sale at Savers. It’s more of a spring color, perhaps. Today, the sky is darkening gray, and if he squints at himself he nearly blends in with the bluish tones in the clouds above him. The suit, then, is armor that doubles as camouflage. 

Inside the auditorium, he sends a quick wave to Taylor Bagley before finding seats closer to the stage. The concertmaster stands, drags his bow across a ringing A string. Miles is sitting third chair. He doesn’t look out at the crowd; just tunes and fidgets and, occasionally, coughs wetly into his elbow. 

Amelia falls asleep on Matt’s shoulder before the first piece even begins. As though mirroring her, Miles closes his eyes as soon as he plays the first note. He opens them, periodically, to watch a tempo or style change from the conductor, but otherwise memory seems to allow him to lose himself. It’s charming to watch, even if envy twists in Alex’s gut between each note. 

The last movement of the Janáček climaxes in a low, roaring bass line that seems to shake the room and Alex’s ribcage all at once. Miles keeps his eyes closed for the last chord, pulls his bow to the end and then releases the note with his left hand still wiggling in a loose, open vibrato as sound clouds the air and all of Alex’s senses. Miles’s eyes flicker open just as the corner of his mouth rises in a smile. He could be alone on stage. He’s all Alex sees. 

 

 

 

 

“It’d be a crime for you to ever stop playing that giant fucking violin.”

Miles folds his menu closed, and smirks. “I know.”

He’s not quite as cheeky as he lets on, though: Alex can see his blush, even under the fluorescent lights. While the Helders’ have returned to Cochituate in order put Amelia to bed on time, Miles and Alex have opted for late night falafels at the shoebox of a joint down the street. Now, Miles has seized the front cover of the program Alex was handed at the beginning of the concert and, after ripping it precisely into a perfect square, has begun to construct it into a familiar bird. When he finishes, Alex plucks it off the table to inspect its elegance, but Miles gently retrieves it before Alex can get too attached. “It’s for me,” he murmurs, placing it delicately atop the salt shaker next to his right arm. 

“M’sorry,” Alex replies. “I forgot.”

“It’s alright,” says Miles and, for a fraction of a second, Alex believes that it is. 

 

 

 

 

They end up on the couch, entangled with each other, the TV blaring an analysis of a football game they haven’t seen. Miles slips one cold hand under Alex’s shirt, then laughs at the way he gasps. He’s still laughing when he presses their foreheads together, and Alex lets his hands rest against Miles’s neck, one thumb reaching up to brush Miles’s cheek. 

It’s when his touch strays to just below Miles’s chin that he finds it. 

“Miles?”

Miles opens his eyes, smiling lazily until he sees the expression on Alex’s face. “What?”

“Is your neck alright?”

“My neck?”

Alex sits up, reaching for the pull on the light beside him. “There’s a lump,” he murmurs, squinting as he prods gently at the skin beneath Miles’s jaw. “On both sides.”

Miles frowns, reaching for his neck with a perplexed furrow of his brow. He slips off the couch and heads for the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, Alex watches him prod at the swollen hills under his chin—subtle twins that he wouldn’t have noticed at all if Miles hadn’t tilted his head just the right way. “What the fuck?” Miles mutters, lip pulling back in some combination of disgust and bafflement. 

“Aren’t those like—what are they called?” Alex reaches for his phone, but remembers before he can even unlock it. “Lymph nodes.”

“What does that mean?”

“I dunno,” Alex replies. But he’s already stumbling back toward the living room, toward the piles of discharge papers from the hospital where he knows he’ll find Dr. Avery’s contact information. 

Now is not the time for uncertainty.


	19. Chapter 19

Maybe he should’ve always known that this is where they’d end up, should’ve known from the moment he saw those pill bottles on Miles’s window back in the summer. Still, it’s hard not to feel like this is a bit of a swerve, like they’ve finally veered off into the weeds and a reality they were never really supposed to encounter.  


The train ride is silent. It’s mid afternoon, between meals—there are no commuters to fill the car with chatter. Miles is stoic and quiet in a way that Alex couldn’t have imagined three years ago but over the last few months has seemed to become his default comportment. Alex, for his part, has been sitting with his head in his hands since the moment they sat down.  


He’d called Avery the night before, explained the strange lumps. Avery had asked a number of oddly specific questions about their size and location, then gone silent for one long moment. He’d then referred them to someone at Mass General, and told them he’d pull a few strings to get Miles an early appointment. He had offered no hypothesis, and no reassurance beyond “It was a good idea to call.”  


After Alex hung up, Miles had drifted off to bed, seeming indifferent to his own fate. Maybe he’d been waiting for this; waiting for the waiting to end. Alex had crawled into bed next to him, and made a valiant effort at sleep, too. But before long he was googling the name of the referred physician on his phone, finding her title and credentials and awards. One word in the wall of text had assaulted him then, and continues to leave him nauseous.  


_Oncologist._   


Miles, without a word, puts a hand on his shoulder as the T thunders between Reservoir and Chestnut Hills. Alex pulls his head out of his hands long enough to wonder how it is that _he_ is the one in need of comfort now, after the appointment Miles has just sat through. Surely, they’d heard the same thing. Dr. Savior’s words were perfectly clear.  


“How are you okay right now?” Alex asks.  


Miles shrugs. “I’m not.”  


Silence filters in again. Against his will, Savior’s words replay in Alex’s head, until they’re cut down to barely more than concise, impersonal bullet points. _Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Certainly AIDS related. Biopsy needed for definite confirmation, but very few other possibilities. Treatment should be begun immediately._  


It was at the mention of treatment that Miles had become oddly unresponsive. Perhaps sensing the shift, Savior had, with a meaningful look at Alex, directed them to call her when they were ready to make a plan. Alex had nodded blankly and practically sprinted for the door. The thought, now, of trying to talk through the issue is a crevasse he’s not ready to plunge into.

 

 

 

So he says nothing.  


Back home, Alex climbs out onto the patio to read and to smoke. Somewhere behind him, Miles puts the kettle on, and makes no comment on plans or treatments of anything of the sort. Talking about it, of course, will make it real, and neither of them are in a position to accept reality at this point.  


At one point, Alex scribbles something down on Savior’s business card and ventures inside to leave it next to Miles’s teacup. Miles reads it with bottomless eyes and makes no comment.  


_You seep into everything I sow._   


Alex skips lunch, and then dinner, on the assumption that he can hardly hold down what he nibbled on for breakfast. Miles, eventually, comes out to sit with him, but what should be comfortable silence feels stifling. Finally, Alex can’t keep it in any longer. “So, what do you want to do?”  


Miles tilts his head, squinting at the tree line. “Nothing.”  


“What do you mean ‘nothing’?”  


“She’ll want me to do chemo, or something of the sort,” he says calmly. “That’s not how I want to spend my last few months.”  


“But what if it saves your life?” Alex splutters.  


Miles turns carefully impassive eyes on him. “Then something else will get me. Pneumonia, some other infection. What difference does it make?”  


Alex can feel himself coming apart. “But, Jesus. At least you’d have a change. You could survive, we could go back—”  


“No, we can’t,” Miles cuts in firmly. “We can’t go back to anything. And even if we could, it wouldn’t be like it was, anyway. It was never going to be like it was.”  


And Alex, with his eyes on the space between them, can’t bring himself to disagree. Still, he spits out, “This is fucking insane. How can you claim to give a fuck about me at all if you won’t even bother to fight for what little we have left?”  


“There’s no point fighting for what’s already gone.”  


The last of the day’s light is fading. Miles rises, abruptly, from his seat and turns back toward the house. His face betrays nothing. He reaches out to Alex, cups his chin in one hand and says, “I really am sorry, la.”  


By the time Miles disappears back into the house, Alex is shaking with anger and fear and grief. For Miles to pretend so stubbornly that he feels nothing, for him to pretend like nothing of what they’ve rebuilt together is worth sticking around for a little bit longer, is infuriating. It’s clearly a facade, an attempt to compartmentalize feelings Alex can’t even begin to comprehend, but Miles, it seems, is determined to let some misguided idea of a quiet death after a good run govern his last decisions. But even Alex knows there’s no dignity to be had, treatment or not. And there’s something to be said for buying a little bit of time for the sake of time itself. Time for Alex to figure out how to say goodbye for real, this time.  


Ultimately, he’s halfway through another cigarette before he can barely breathe around the sobs. He hunches over, shoulders wracked, one thought overpowering all the others.  


_Miles thinks he’s going to die, and he’s right._

 

 

 

Alex awakes, the next morning, to the sound of Miles on the phone with Dr. Savior in the next room. The decision’s been made, then. The discussion’s over. He bites hard on the inside of his cheek, until it bleeds. Miles ends the call, slides back into the bedroom and sits gingerly at the foot of the bed.  


Finally, Alex chokes out, “Why couldn’t we have just been happy?”  


Miles shakes his head. “I dunno.”  


After a moment, he lays down on top of the covers, on his side so that he’s facing Alex. He’s in work clothes, but for once pays no mind to wrinkles. Alex closes his eyes tight so that he doesn’t have to meet his gaze.  


“I had to make this decision for me, you realize,” Miles says, voice quiet and careful. “I ran out of good options.”  


Alex nods, because there’s not much else he can do. This decision is like the paper cranes littered around the house, it seems. For Miles, and Miles alone.  


“I’m sorry for this mess,” Alex breathes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t enough to pull it all back together.”  


It was all flawed from the beginning, Alex supposes. It was never going to be like it was in Providence again; maybe it was foolish to try to salvage what they could, if it was only going to put them here. With Miles letting go and Alex lost completely if there’s nothing left to hold onto. It may not have been perfect, but at the moment Alex can’t even discern if it was worth it.  


Miles is quiet for a long moment. “You’re all there is for me, you know. It was always going to be you.”  


Alex lets out a long breath. “I know.”  


Miles pulls him across the sheets and into embrace that feels far too fragile, far too inconsequential. Alex can’t pull away.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait on this one! I spent all of December working through some original stuff + sending off my last college apps. And then I saw Rogue One this week and lost my mind.  
> Good news (bad news?) is that we're in the homestretch on this one, so brace yourselves.

New England winter arrives in full force, and Alex trades Blundstones for Sorrells. The days are gray haze. He goes to work, does the shopping, is buffeted by arctic winds—and, eventually, he comes home to a haze of a different kind. Sometimes, Matt is there, eyeing Alex’s state of perpetual shock with concern, or maybe just loading the dishwasher. The entire world is muted and half-lit; a stage just before a show begins, with players huddled in corners, readying themselves for the coming performance. Alex, already, feels as though he’s missed all his cues. Like he’s lost his grip on the plot. 

He arrives home after the morning shift one Wednesday to find a packet of documents waiting for him on the kitchen counter. Miles is leaning against the sink, arms crossed over his chest, and Matt has the kettle on and three mugs in a neat row beside the stove top. Alex slips out of his coat and reaches for the papers. _Living Will. Medical Power of Attorney._

Alex agrees to it all, signs his name, and then puts himself down as Miles’s emergency contact for good measure. Matt signs everything, too, as a witness. It’s only later that it occurs to Alex what a peculiar thing it is, to specify death during life. And then, also, what Medical PoA really means—an honor, perhaps, the highest sign of trust. _You control my death. You are responsible for me when I can no longer be responsible for myself. This is your duty._

An honor, then, and perhaps also a punishment. 

Miles has lost weight. They have not discussed this fact, but when Alex rolls over in the middle of the night, he can feel the jagged edges of Miles’s spine press into his side. A persistent cough now graces him, too. Savior, once informed that Miles would not be seeking treatment beyond the palliative, had offered a timeline on the scale of months. Summer has never seemed so far away, so impossibly foreign. 

Slowly, Miles has withdrawn from his commitments inside the community. No more string quartet gigs, no more weekend clinics, no more guest conducting for local symphonies. People come by, sometimes, like they’ve sensed that something off, sensed that his absence is not a temporary state. Alex never knows what to say, and so either boxes himself into verbal corners or says nothing at all. 

In the evenings, they watch football, but talk over half the game. All the words lost in the void of Alex’s time abroad, dammed by the uncertainty of the last few months, finally come spilling out. They talk about nothing, and everything, the way couples are supposed to, the way the two of them used to. 

Afterwards, as he curls into bed, Alex says, “We have so much more to talk about. I forgot.”

Miles smiles, exposing the bottom half of his crooked teeth. “I know.”

“We don’t have time to sleep.”

The smile fades, but the creases around Miles’s eyes remain. “I know,” he repeats. He reaches for the light, and Alex has never been so relieved to be plunged so jarringly into night. 

 

 

He’s in the cereal aisle at Stop & Shop when the phone begins to buzz in his back pocket. He receives so few calls these days that the ringing immediately sends him into something of a panic, on the assumption that all news is bad news. Once he’s reshuffled the grocery items in his arms enough to reach back for the phone, the momentum carries him forward—he doesn’t even pause to look at the caller ID before answering with a slightly breathless, “Hello?”

“Turner. It’s Josh.”

“Oh, hello, Joshua,” he replies casually, even though his brow creases into a frown. “What can I do for you?”

Homme seems to recognize the reticence in his voice. For a moment, Alex is sure he’s going to have to endure yet another condolence call, but instead Josh gets straight to the point. “You told me to keep on the lookout for jobs,” he says. “Well, I think I’ve found one that’d be a good fit for you, actually.”

“Oh?” Alex feels himself seize with anxiety, but keeps his voice carefully neutral. 

“The Oriental Institute at UC. Pretty once in a lifetime stuff, as you know.” Josh’s voice is losing some of it’s even timbre; he’s excited. “They’ve got a dig going on in Jordan right now, but there’s a place for you in Hyde Park too afterwards.”

“That’s quite a job,” Alex says quietly. “The competition’s going to be mad for it.”

“Well, yeah,” Homme concedes. “But it’s not like you aren’t qualified. It’s worth a shot.”

“I suppose,” replies Alex, eyes fixed blankly on the shelves in front of him. “It’s a bit far away though, isn’t it? I don’t think Miles coul—I don’t think he’d want to move.”

“Oh, well, that is a factor.”

Is it possible that Josh really doesn’t know the reality of the situation? Alex wonders. Has the creeping, insidious news not spread as far as he initially thought? It’s comforting, in a way, if this is true. If the world doesn’t know, then perhaps it isn’t real. Perhaps Miles is fine, is going to be fine, after all. 

“I’ll talk to him about it,” Alex says. He already knows he will do no such thing. “Thanks for letting me know, mate.”

“No problem.” There’s a pause. Alex tries not to breathe. “Are you guys doing okay? Settling back in?”

Alex, suddenly, feels his throat constrict. He closes his eyes, takes one long breath. Readying himself for the lie. “Yeah, we’re alright.”

“That’s good,” Homme says, a little too fast. “I hadn’t seen you in awhile, I guess I figured...well, maybe it’s not important.”

“Maybe not,” Alex sighs in agreement. “I’ll talk to you later, yeah?”

He’s not really sure who he’s asking. 

“Yeah,” Josh says. Perhaps they will never speak again. “Take care. Bye.”

He hangs up before Alex can get another word in. Alex allows himself to dwell in the memories—and in the possibilities, too—for just a moment, then finishes his shopping and ventures back out into the mid afternoon snowscape that awaits.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short chapter and it took me 800 years to write it? sorry dudes. times have been tough, but we're almost done.

_You invade my mind like the night invades the day._

He’d written it on the back of an envelope before heading off for the morning shift at Russell’s, and when he returns home the envelope has disappeared off the coffee table. He realizes, distractedly, that his notes always seem to disappear rather permanently. They don’t end up floating around the house, slipping in and out of his peripheral vision. No, Miles takes them, and then they’re gone. Or maybe just missing. 

He finds Miles still in bed, the blankets piled high and pulled up to his chin. Alex pauses on the threshold, just until he can hear the sound of Miles’s breathing, before fully entering the room. It’s a morbid thought and a morbid ritual, to listen for life before entering, but these days that’s all he knows. 

Miles’s eyes flutter open when Alex settles gingerly onto the edge of the bed. The duvet sags under him, exposing a long fingered hand. Miles, his eyes baggy and shadowed, raises an eyebrow at him. “How was it?”

“Busy,” Alex replies, tugging at the collar of the coat he has yet to remove. “Saturday mornings always are.”

Miles sighs out a long breath, fingers twitching. “The peonies aren’t in season yet, are they?”

Alex fixes him with a long look before shaking his head. “Not until spring.”

“Good,” says Miles, eyes settling on the ceiling. Alex reaches out to intertwine their fingers, and even through his glove he can feel the chill of Miles’s skin.

 

 

Saturday lunch at the Helders’ has become something of a habit, if for no other reason than it gives Miles a reason to get out of bed. It also invariably creates an atmosphere of normalcy, if only for a few hours. Alex has latched onto it as a lifeline, a bright spot in particularly gray winter. 

“So I ran into Josh Homme a little while back,” Matt says, cutting a messy Reuben diagonally in half. “He said something about a spot at the Oriental Institute for you?”

“It’s just an opening,” Alex says, shrugging vaguely. He can feel Miles’s eyes land on him across the table. “Don’t think I’d have much of a chance.”

“You’re not even gonna apply?” Matt asks.

Alex looks up with a scowl, flopping out a hand indignantly. “It’s in fucking Chicago, anyways. I’d have to move.”

“Why not move, then?” Miles asks, voice quietly even. 

Alex raises an eyebrow. “You want to move to Chicago?”

“No,” Miles says, perfectly nonchalant. His stoicism, it seems, knows no bounds. “But that doesn’t mean _you_ shouldn’t.”

“Are you mental?” Alex splutters, but before Miles can reply beyond an exasperated shrug, Amelia begins to fuss. Lunch breaks up, and but the tension doesn’t leave the air. 

Outside, Alex trails Matt down the driveway to the mailbox by the edge of the road. The air is gelid and dry. Matt props one leg up on a pile of dirty snow like it’s a conquered beast and combs through the day’s post. 

“What the fuck does he expect me to do?” Alex huffs, eventually. His breath turns white in the air. “Just leave him? Now, of all times?”

“Well, you did leave him once before,” Matt replies, perfectly matter-of-fact. He doesn’t look up from the mail. 

“He wasn’t fucking _dying_ , back then,” Alex hisses, but it rings hollow in his chest. What difference did it make? he wonders. He’d still left. 

Behind him, Amelia is racing through the remains of last week’s snowfall, dressed in a neon pink ski suit. Eventually, she settles down next to Miles to make dirty snow angels. Alex watches them for a moment, then turns back to Matt. “You don’t really think I should apply for that job, do you?”

Matt’s gaze is unreadable. “The only person who can sort out your priorities is you.”

Amelia’s laugh carries over on the breeze, an octave above Miles’s huskier one.

“I couldn’t do it,” Alex says, voice barely audible. “I couldn’t leave him. Not again.”

“Then don’t,” Matt says. “And tell him that, for fuck’s sake, ‘cause Miles still seems to think you’ll run off at any moment.”

And maybe Miles always will, Alex thinks. Maybe the damage is done. 

Something has changed in the tone of Amelia’s voice. Alex looks back over his shoulder to see that the pink ski suit has paused over a dark mass that, after a moment, Alex realizes is in the shape of a man. The shape of a man collapsed in the snow. 

 

 

The white of the hospital room is made even more bleached of color by the gray of the sky filtering in through the window. Alex is perched on the sill, watching the sidewalk three stories below. Doctors, huddled in white lab coats, criss cross between buildings, each one of them seeming oddly out of place. Like they’ve been copy and pasted from some other reality into this one, without context or warm coats. 

A nurse or two pops in occasionally, and Alex nods to them silently, but mostly he keeps his eyes on the outside world. It is an easier sight than Miles, asleep and unmoving in the centrally placed bed. He’s been sporadically awake, but weak and confused. Alex has asked every doctor they’ve seen when Miles will be able to return home, and none have given him a straight answer. He’s beginning to think that _maybe soon_ and actually means _never._

Breana has brought him a collection things from home to kill time. A few books, a pair of earphones. He digs through the pile and finds _A Passage to India_ among the paperbacks. It’s the copy Miles had given him for Christmas in Providence a lifetime ago, the binding now cracked and the pages folded from following him around Asia. 

He glances over at Miles, then back down at the book in his hands. Gray light washes out the colors on the cover, generates a glare on the lacquered surface. It takes him a moment to find his voice, to peel back the pages, but eventually he finds the first sentence and begins to read aloud, into the stillness of the room. 

_Except for the Marabar Caves—and they are twenty miles off—the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary...._

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
